Some of the nation’s wealthiest and most successful CEOs may soon have to compare their incomes with the workers under them in a report for the SEC. This proposed rule comes in response to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms, but little headway has been made in its execution. Large companies have already voiced their opposition to the rule, saying that collecting that type of information would entail “significant hurdles and burdens.” One of these hurdles would be the collection of pay data for oversea employees. President for the Center on Executive Compensation, Tim Bartl, pointed out that “companies have no business purpose to collect that information globally.” According to Keith Higgin, Director of Corporation Finance, a suggested compromise that the SEC is seriously considering is the collection of a statistical sample of workers in the middle of the pay range.
Advocates of the rule, like Bartlett Naylor, feel that “it’s long overdue, and of the 400-plus rules from Doss-Frank, it’s the simplest.” Many advocates also feel that taking a mid-range sampling of incomes would allow companies to ignore overseas employees, because of how the SEC would conduct the reporting. For example, AFL-CIO Office of Investment chief research analyst Vineeta Anand explained how “Chinese workers aren’t anywhere near the midpoint,” therefore excluding them from the sampling. Either way, a final decision will be expected soon, and then the plan could take a year to put into practice.
