Words And Values
Jerry Lockspeiser trys to find out exactly what "compensation" means when it comes to big business execs.
25 Jan 2012, 14:45
Compensation for some and not for others
A recent article in The Economist on executive pay states that UK chief executives receive average compensation in excess of £4.5m.
My Collins English dictionary defines compensation as “ the act or process of making amends for something” or “ something given as reparation for loss, injury etc”. Apart from the easy jibe that it is the banksters who should be making amends or repairing loss to the British public not the other way round, the use of the term compensation to describe executive pay is an extraordinary statement of relative values.
Workers earn weekly wages, employees earn monthly salaries but the business elite and Masters of the Universe are compensated.
Top business people get a package that may include salary, bonus, shares, many benefits, a golden parachute payment etc. So they receive a remuneration or employment package, terms that are neutral. Receiving a wage or salary for handing over labour time is also compensation. Restricting the term to describe the remuneration of a small elite part of the work force makes it sound as though their being kind enough to turn up at the office is an altogether more valuable thing than it is for others. Differentiating in this way says ‘these people are inherently more important than the rest of you’, so we have to compensate them for the injury done in taking their time away. It has a psychological effect that reinforces their believed superiority.
If anyone should be compensated in the true meaning of the word it’s those doing the most unpleasant, unsociable or risky jobs. Meanwhile the term should have no place in our current lexicon of employment remuneration because it is a Trojan horse implying there are superior beings who inhabit a higher plane than the rest. There aren’t and they don’t.
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