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AMERICA'S UNION MOVEMENT EXPOSES CEO's MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR PAY CHECKS... EVEN AS COMPANIES AND STAFF GROAN

The America's Union Movement, AFL-CIO, has launched what it calls the 2008 executive paywatch website. The data base exposes details of the pay checks of chief executives of top blue chip companies.It is coming against the backdrop of companies running into financial mess, while the top guns smile to the banks.

The union wants the public, which bears the brunt of the excesses of the chief executives, to know how their wages compares with those of the CEO's

According to the movement, too often compensation programmes encouraged top corporate executives to maximize short term financial gains at the expense of long term sustainability. In effect, it argues, boards of directors rewarded their CEO's for generating financial results that were often based on taking on impossible levels of sub-prime mortgage risks.

Some of those showcased include Countrywide, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and Bear Sterns. It exposes pay packages, including those of CEO's whose companies helped create the sub prime mortgage meltdown.

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AFL-CIO, gave details of the severance package of the chairman of sick countrywide which suffered $1.6billion in mortgage related loses in 2007.When Angelo Mozillo leaves, he would have with him an enhanced supplemental executive retirement plan with lump worth of $22.4million, and a pension plan worth $1.3million.Mozillo would go home with $20.6 million in deffered compensation, and another $414,000 in stock options that he exercised between 2004 and 2007. The Countrywide pubha is also entitled to stoks in Bank of America, which takes over Countrywide. This is worth another whooping $10million.

In 2007at Merrill Lynch,the CEO, E. Stanley O'Neal, got $584, 231 as salary, vested stock awards, $26,800.049; deferred compensation earning, $10.9 million; other perks, $593, 691, bring the total to $28,286.332.

At Citigroup same year, Charles Prince, the CEO, got $1million as salary, $10.4million as bonus, fair value of stocks and option arrears, $13.885million; compensation earnings $55,367; other perks $179,276.

James Layne at Bear Sterns took home in 2006, $250,000as salary, bonus, $17million, resricted stock awards, $14million.

The site includes links to Representatives, and Senators where the public can urge their senators to support giving shareholders a say on CEO's pay.

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