Velázquez Reintroduces CEO Pay Bill as Disparities Between Executives and Autoworkers Come to Light

Washington D.C.— Today, Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY) reintroduced a bill to address the growing income discrepancy between company CEOs, other senior staff, and median-pay employees. Velázquez's bill, the Greater Accountability in Pay, H.R. TBD, would require public companies to disclose the pay raise percentage of its executives and median-pay employees and compare each to the inflation rate.

Velázquez reintroduced the bill following disclosures that CEOs at the Big Three automakers make as much as 365 times more than their median employees, and pay for these CEOs has increased more than 40 percent in the last four years. 

"UAW contract negotiations have made it clear that compensation disparities between CEOs and average employees are out of control. Americans are sick and tired of watching income inequality continue to balloon, and corporate greed go unchecked,” said Velázquez. "By establishing tough transparency requirements for these automakers and other publicly traded companies, this bill takes an important step toward addressing this problem and holding companies accountable for how they treat their employees."

The legislation builds on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which the Congresswoman was closely involved in crafting. Dodd-Frank required publicly traded companies to provide information comparing the annual compensation of their CEOs to their employees. The bill introduced today would go a step further, making public raises for CEOs compared to lower-level employees.

The Greater Accountability in Pay Act would also require public companies to disclose the ratio between the two pay raise percentages.

For a copy of the bill, click here. 

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