In several coordinated wage and hour class actions, technicians working for Certified Tire and Services Centers, Inc. sued for unpaid minimum wages and rest periods. The technicians claimed that Certified Tire’s Technician Compensation Program (“TCP”) was an unlawful “activity-based compensation system” because it failed to pay separately for time spent on repair tasks and for rest periods. The technicians claimed that, under the TCP, Certified Tire improperly sought to “average” the hourly rate to comply with minimum wage requirements. READ MORE
Stock Awards to CEOs Have Grown Considerably
Stock awards have become a key compensation vehicle used by boards in their efforts to better align pay and performance for the long term, almost entirely replacing stock options. It is one of the main findings from a new report, CEO and Executive Compensation Practices: 2018 Edition, a collaboration by The Conference Board, Gallagher, and MyLogIQ. READ MORE
Netflix lets top employees look up each other's salaries
Netflix’s policy of disclosing the salaries of its executives has left some high-level employees obsessively checking to see if their colleagues have gotten a raise, according to a report this week. READ MORE
Walgreens is raising wages and it's all because of Trump's tax cuts
The pharmacy-chain owner Walgreens Boots Alliance announced Thursday that it will make investments of about $150 million to boost mainly its in-store wages in fiscal 2019 in wake of President Donald Trump's tax reforms. READ MORE
Amazon’s pay increase cut bonuses and stock options. So it’s raising wages again.
Last week, Amazon announced it would start paying all its warehouse workers a minimum of $15 an hour. Now, after receiving backlash that an increase in warehouse wages to $15 an hour would actually hurt some of its workers, Amazon said it will adjust some payment plans so that workers will not lose money. READ MORE
Use Inducement Grants To Protect An Equity Plan's Share Reserve
Most publicly-traded issuers are interested in ideas that could help increase the life expectancy of the share reserve under its stockholder-approved equity incentive plan. The purpose of this “Tip of the Week” is to discuss the use of “inducement grants” as one of the many ideas to consider. READ MORE
In Silicon Valley, the rich get richer while wages stagnate for the rest
Silicon Valley is considered an economic powerhouse, lauded as a model of economic growth the world over. Yet the wealth disparity between low, mid and high-level tech workers is far greater than it was two decades ago; worse, the economic impact of the tech industry in the Bay Area has been making the rich richer and the poor poorer, according to a new study published on Monday. READ MORE
Small Business Optimism Is Still Soaring, Compensation Increases Set New Record
The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index marked its third-highest level ever in September. At 107.9, the index is just slightly below the 108 level hit in 1983 and the 108.8 level reached in August. READ MORE
Administration to Review Government ‘Competitiveness’ on Compensation
The offices of Personnel Management and Management and Budget will spend the next year studying the “competitiveness” of federal compensation with that of agencies' private sector counterparts, according to a quarterly update to President Trump’s management agenda. READ MORE
Drew Brees is NFL's 3rd-highest paid player ever
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees’ record-breaking success on the field has translated to one of the most lucrative careers in NFL history. READ MORE
Why Some Amazon Workers Are Fuming About Their Raise
Last week, Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president in charge of operations, stood on a ladder in a warehouse near Los Angeles and announced to employees that Amazon was raising pay for its vast blue-collar work force. READ MORE
9 Things to Never Say in a Salary Negotiation
You’re 96 percent sure that you are ready to schedule a meeting with your boss to ask for a raise. Or perhaps you’re nearing the end of the job interview process and an offer is in sight. However, if you’re like me, you have definitely put your foot in your mouth a time or two saying the wrong thing at the absolute worst moment. Doh! READ MORE
Minimum wage hikes don't help poor people
That a higher minimum wage can actually lower incomes is one of those things intensely debated. Absolutely every economist will agree that this can be true at some level of that minimum wage. If you make the minimum wage $100 an hour, you're going to see an awful lot of people earning absolutely nothing through having no job at all. There are perhaps a few (Nick Hanauer comes to mind) who think that this is nonsense. READ MORE
Employees’ Share of Health Costs Continues Rising Faster Than Wages
Annual family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose five percent to an average $19,616 this year, extending a seven-year run of moderate increases.The average single deductible now stands at $1,573 for those workers who have one, similar to last year’s $1,505 average. On average, workers this year are contributing $5,547 toward the cost of family coverage, with employers paying the rest. READ MORE
Bankers get it wrong on CU compensation
Bankers increasingly are attacking credit unions, and one of their latest strategies is to publish what they claim is “excessive” CEO compensation at individual institutions.
A 2017 op-ed criticized credit unions for paying employees “more than $100,000 a year… while working at a ‘non-profit.’” READ MORE
Inside The Black Box Of CMO Compensation: What Is Negotiable And What Isn't
Navigating the CMO job offer. What is negotiable (and what isn’t), how best to negotiate, and when not to press? These are questions CMOs struggle to answer. To shed light on these questions, I talked with Richard Sanderson, former leader of the marketing officers executive search practice at Russell Reynolds Associates and currently a consultant for Spencer Stuart. In prior articles, Sanderson discussed the five mistakes CMOs make when negotiating an offer and the steps CMOs can take to protect themselves. Below, Sanderson provides insight on the negotiation to help CMOs better understand what levers to pull--and which to ignore. READ MORE
It’s Time to Consider Compensation in Employee Engagement Efforts
Throughout the business world, there’s no shortage of conversation about employee engagement. Experts all over agree that keeping employees engaged is vital to retaining key staff, driving productivity, and increasing innovation. What they don’t seem to agree on, however, is how to actually make that happen. READ MORE
The Skills Shortage and Federal Compensation
The cost of ignoring the workforce problems attributable to the General Schedule is very real and gets worse year after year. The GS system may well contribute to every government performance problem but the politics downplay its importance. Until it’s replaced, the problems will get progressively worse. READ MORE
Total Compensation Has Flatlined for All But the Top 10%
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has long provided something called the Employer Cost Index. The idea behind this number is that it includes the total cost of employing someone: wages, of course, but also health care, retirement benefits, paid leave, etc. This is useful because it tells us how much employers really have to spend to hire an extra person. Here’s the answer for the past decade: READ MORE
Big business keeping wages down?
Stagnant wages may be the result of the increasing strength of big business and corporations, according to a new study. READ MORE