AOL NEWS: In a stirring Bloomberg BusinessWeek article, Leslie Patton tells the story of one McDonald’s employee. His name is Tyree Johnson. The 44-year-old has worked at the fast food chain for two decades, yet still makes just $8.25 an hour, and doesn’t get 40 hours a week of work. So Johnson has jobs at two Chicago McDonald’s, scrubbing himself down in the bathroom between shifts, because he may be denied a raise if he smells bad. Twice a month he goes to church food pantries to stock up on cereal, soup and powdered milk.
Johnson would have to work for 1.1 million hours to earn the $8.8 million that McDonald’s CEO James Skinner was paid last year. If he worked for 40 hours a week, every week of the year, that would take five centuries.
Opportunity is bright, profits are soaring, and the jobs are horribly paid. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, retail sales employed 4.5 million Americans in 2010, and fast food restaurants employed 2.1 million. The annual salaries for these jobs are $20,990 and $18,070, respectively. And these are no longer part-time jobs for teenagers; the vast majority of workers are in their 20s and older, and many of them are raising families… (more)
The astonishing aspect of this article is not that Johnson only makes $8/hour, but that Skinner makes $8.8 million. It’s proof that capitalism is not the invisible hand that Adam Smith promised it could be.
It is inconceivable that Skinner could do the work of 22 people making $400,000/ year ( or 44 people making $200,000/yr) !
How can this happen? Why do stockholders consistently overpay upper management? They don’t, fat cat corporate directors give these jobs of excessive compensation to friends and relatives at the detriment of shareholders and customers.