A beginning public school teacher in San Francisco makes $31,000. Rentals
are usually in the $1500 - $2,000 per month range and often in the worst
neighborhoods of the city. A run down fixer-upper in-side the city limits
would start around $350,000 +.
Beginning Administrators make well under $60,000. A senior Principal makes
just $83,000 and would have difficulty qualifiying for a home in SF on one
salary. A new Superintendent was just hired for just under $200,000 plus
numerous perks.
Teachers come from all over America to interview because after all,
everyone wants to live in wide-open San Francisco. As soon as they see what
it would cost just to exist in SF on that wonderful salary, they catch the
next plane back to New Jersey or to other points north-south-and east of
the Golden Gate.
These same conditions exist in most Bay Area locations such as San Jose,
Berkeley, San Mateo and Marin. In the face of all the dot com wealth as in
San Jose what is the poor public school teacher to do?...
Ron Cabral
Educator/Writer
San Francisco
At 09:39 AM 6/19/00 -0400, you wrote:
>monkerud wrote:
>
>> A long post, but worth reading. How did we let things get this bad?
>>
>
>> Gap between executives and rank-and-file grows wider
>>
>> In 1996, the typical chief executive of a large corporation in the
United States earned 24 times what a manufacturing worker made, according
to annual salary data collected by New York-based consultants Towers
Perrin. By last year, the CEO was taking home 34 times what a factory
worker collected. That spread is far larger and growing faster than ratios
in European countries. The U.S. gap would probably be even larger if the
survey measured service workers such as janitors or cafeteria cooks.
>>
>> Compensation among the 767 Silicon Valley executives in the Mercury News
survey of large companies shot up 70 percent in 1999 after a 21 percent
jump the year before. By contrast, the average annual wage around San Jose
crept up a mere 5.87 percent to $51,509 from 1997 to 1998, the latest date
available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
>>
>> It would take about 11,845 years for someone making the federal minimum
wage of $5.15 to earn the $121.7 million that Cisco Systems Chief Executive
John Chambers collected last year.
>
>While no sensible person would discount the income disparity (whereby 20%
of the people are holding 80% of the assets), these comparisons are odd.
Why would you compare Silicon Valley executive pay to manufacturing rank
and file pay? Why would you compare it to average wage? The point that's
being made is that executives are earning more than their employees, but
the stats used don't compare the two, if you'll notice. What's the ratio
for Silicon Valley execs compared to Silicon Valley rank and file?
>
>The tech industry is a special case, currently fed by billions of
speculative dollars. Money is flowing from top to bottom. Don't believe me?
I can put you in touch with a friend of mine who started at AOL out of
college, as a sales rep/customer service person. She retired last year
(she's 33), cashing in millions in stock options given to her when AOL
stock was in the single digits. To castigate people for having the good
fortune to get involved in a company whose value soars seems out of line.
The range of
>positions eligible for options is ever broadening, and when you compare
them to straight salary, to me they represent a more "democratic" form of
compensation. Your stock value is predicated entirely on the performance of
the whole company, which means you as VP of marketing are at least
partially reliant on Joe Customer Service Rep, who attracts or repels
potential customers with far more impact than you do.
>
>I cannot dispute the fact that top executives are being compensated way
out of proportion to their tangible value. On the other hand, why is it
their fault if they signed on with a company at $30/share, and leave it at
$100/share?
>
>My point with this note was really to skewer the manipulated comparison
from the original article. At least compare apples to apples!
>--
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Mark Bunster **It's a different kind of feeling
>Survey Research Lab**you might not have felt at all
>VA. Commonwealth U **makes me jump and touch the ceiling
>Richmond, VA 23284 **if I fall well then I fall.
>mbunster@vcu.edu **
>rbunster@earthlink.net** --Chisel
>http://www.imagineradio.com/mymusiclisten.asp?name=mbunster
>
>
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