Question: Knowing that compensation is not black and white, utilize your understanding of compensation best practices to answer the questions in the attached document which have been taken from the recent news. You should have 2 strong paragraphs explaining your responses to each compensation scenario.
1) JUST HOW MUCH IS THAT CEO WORTH?
The disparity between what chief executive officers earn and what their employees earn continues to grow exponentially. CEO pay levels have increased dramatically for more than 20 years. Pay levels for workers, however, have stagnated.
Do executive compensation figures reflect an efficient market, or a failed one?
Are pay levels adequately disclosed?
Should shareholders have more say?
Are there issues of fairness and justice?
2) GENDER PAY EQUALITY
The Senate has been expected to call a vote for some time now on the Paycheck Fairness Act, an update on 1963's Equal Pay Act, which made wage discrimination based on one's sex illegal. With a reported 77 cents to the dollar pay gap between women and men, respectively, persisting nearly five decades later, the Paycheck Fairness Act is designed to help those who believe they are victims of gender-based wage discrimination by making wages more transparent, by requiring that employers prove that wage discrepancies are tied to legitimate business qualifications and not gender, and by prohibiting companies from taking retaliatory action against employees who raise concerns about gender-based wage discrimination. The bill, supported by the Obama administration, was passed by the House in January 2009 only to be stalled in the Senate in November 2010, and was reintroduced in both chambers in April 2011.
Should the Senate pass the Paycheck Fairness Act?
3) TEACHER PAY
Teacher pay has long been blamed for the diminishing quality of education in the United States. Education activists from former first lady Laura Bush to former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan argue that salaries for teachers should be increased both to properly compensate teachers for their difficult occupation and to lure more competent young people into the profession. However, a recent report conducted by scholars at the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute sought to debunk that claim, suggesting not only that public school teachers are not underpaid, they may in fact be overpaid.
Are teachers overpaid? Should teacher's pay be merit based and, if so, how do you measure performance?
4) STUDENT/ATHLETE COMPENSATION
Two years ago, the Villanova-North Carolina contest averaged 17.8 million viewers across the Turner networks. This was the second most-viewed college basketball ever on cable, behind only the Wisconsin-Kentucky semifinal the year before. Viewership peaked from 11:15-11:30 p.m. ET with 22.3 million.
Should NCAA Student-athletes be paid? Why or why not?
5) NON-PROFIT PAY PACKAGES
The compensation and retirement package for Gloria Pace King, president of the United Way of Central Carolinas, in Charlotte, N.C., has prompted a debate about whether salaries of nonprofit executives should mirror those of for-profit executives. Ms. King's compensation was $1.2-million in the fiscal year ending June 2007 and included more than $822,000 in retirement benefits, reports The Charlotte Observer. The United Way's board chairman told the newspaper the retirement payments were larger than usual because the organization discovered it had not paid the appropriate amounts since 2000.
Should nonprofit heads be paid the same as for-profit leaders?
6) MEDIA CIRCUS
Donald trump had requested a five million dollar payday from CNN in order to participate in the political debates in December, 2015.
If you are a media company, what is your take on this request?