The figure relating to the super compensation of Tim Cook, Apple’s number one, arrived like lightning in the already complicated world of controversy over the super salaries of top managers: a record salary, double that of the highest paid driver in F1, Lewis Hamilton, and soared thanks to the awards he earned in shares of the company that earned him nearly $ 100 million in 2021. And considering that the average salary for Apple employees last year was $ 68,254, Tim Cook received a salary equal to 1,447 times that of one of his collaborators.
The analysis
What’s behind Apple’s 3 trillion billion
by Bruno Ruffilli
And we are talking about official numbers that come from a document delivered by Apple itself to the SEC, the authority that controls the market in the US. From here we learn that Cook’s salary remained at $ 3 million in 2021, but then the manager received $ 82.3 million in Apple stock awards, $ 12 million for reaching Apple’s goals and 1.4 million dollars for air travel. For a total of almost 100 million.
According to the latest Executive Paywatch report, released by the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio in S&P 500 companies was 299 to 1 in 2020. Much different than that. of today. Of course, it is clear that top executives must earn more, indeed significantly more, than average workers, but at the same time there is a growing criticism of the widening gap between CEO pay and regular employee pay.
In fact, data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute shows that inflation-adjusted CEO pay at the 350 largest public corporations in the United States grew by 1,322% between 1978 and 2020. In stark contrast, real wages of the production / unsupervised workers grew by just 18% during the same time frame, raising doubts that workers are getting their fair share of the value they help create.
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