Should Top Executives Make The Money They Do

9 Pages 2317 Words

t glance, this situation may appear to be one involving a greedy and overpaid executive. However, upon closer examination, it proves to be much to the contrary. The situation wherein the 40,000 employees were laid off, was not a matter of getting rid of people for an unfounded reason. It was more a matter of getting rid of an excessively large work force, and getting the same job done with fewer people. This not only benefited ATT, but also, the customers receiving service from ATT. "For exactly the same service in 1996, the average family will be paying $11 less."1 This is due to the fact that the consumer's money was not going to a larger number of employees, but going directly to the minimal cost of performing the job. Robert Allen has a total salary of 20 million dollars. This salary seems to be extremely high when put as a statistic by itself. This changes, though, when you compare it to the total earning of ATT. His salary calculates to be 1/3,450 of ATT's gross. All of the sudden, the 20 million dollars does not seem like such a high figure after all. Another factor that serves to make his salary a valid amount, is that even if his total pay was split between all of the laid off workers, they would only receive about $500, not much more than a weeks pay. When all of the cards are on the table, a salary of 20 million dollar starts to look quite reasonable. Top Executives Are Under A Lot Of Pressure Most jobs are clear-cut. A person has a designated task to perform, and the method of performing this task is clearly laid out. If all directions are followed, then there is not too much that can go wrong. This, unfortunately, is not the situation for top executives in companies. They are in the tough position of making decisions that may affect the whole company. With one bad move, they can bring a multi-million dollar business under. On the same level,...