We all know that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is among the wealthiest people on the planet. He added a cool $13 billion to his net worth in a single day when shares of the company surged. READ MORE
Growing Wage Inequality Is Caused by Growing Skill Inequality
In recent years, the gap between the highest and lowest income brackets has become an area of growing concern for economists and policymakers, not to mention the low-wage workers who have been left behind. In late 2013, President Obama said that inequality was the defining issue of our time. READ MORE
Blizzard Workers Share Salaries in Revolt Over Wage Disparities
Employees at Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard Inc., began circulating a spreadsheet on Friday to anonymously share salaries and recent pay increases, the latest example of rising tension in the video game industry over wage disparities and executive compensation. READ MORE
Trump fires Tennessee Valley Authority chair over compensation, outsourcing
President Donald Trump said Monday that he had fired the chair of the Tennessee Valley Authority, saying the executive was getting paid too much and was hiring foreign workers. READ MORE
Sickened by COVID-19, low-wage workers lose jobs. Others are denied paid leave.
Lucie Joseph started to feel sick on April 28 as she rang up customers at a Shell gas station in Delray Beach, Florida.
Joseph said her boss wouldn't give her time off without a doctor's note. But the owner of the gas station, Sun Gas Marketing and Petroleum, didn't offer her health insurance, so she didn't go to the doctor. Joseph, a single mother with a 10-year-old son, kept working — seven more shifts over 10 days. READ MORE
Pittsburgh launches 'guaranteed income' program with Jack Dorsey money
Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto announced that his city is now participating in a program receiving funding from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in which eligible residents will receive $500 in monthly "guaranteed income." READ MORE
What COVID means to compensation
The coronavirus pandemic has upended scores of traditional HR structures: hiring, recruiting, onboarding and compensation. The latter is one area, experts say, that has become increasingly more complex, as employers must consider the full context of the pandemic—both now and what may come in the near future—while they redesign approaches to compensation. READ MORE
Eastman Kodak’s top executive reportedly got Trump deal windfall on an ‘understanding’
Eastman Kodak on Monday granted its executive chairman options for 1.75 million shares as the result of what a person familiar with the arrangement described as an “understanding” with its board that had previously neither been listed in his employment contract nor made public. READ MORE
Redefining productivity and compensation in an AI age
This week I ran into an interesting product that could substantially speed up writers who do a lot of repetitive work. It's called ActiveWords, and it's now in its fourth generation. It works by allowing you to connect elements to acronyms you create. For instance, if you must use the same charts in different responses, such as for product support, you type a few letters and instantly the chart pops into in the email. READ MORE
Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division Issues New Guidance Materials
The Department of Labor’s (DOL's) Wage and Hour Division has issued a new set of assistance materials to help employers navigate the evolving challenges facing businesses during COVID-19. These assistance materials come at a time when many businesses are beginning to set long-term adjustments to the virus, such as remote work policies, mask and safety guidelines and modified hours. READ MORE
COVID-19: Impact on Nonqualified Deferred Compensation Plans
The IRS’s guidance on the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and COVID-19 has largely been focused on tax qualified plans and individual retirement accounts (IRAs), but sponsors of nonqualified deferred compensation (NQDC) plans need to deal with some of the same issues as qualified plan sponsors. These include understanding the current financial needs of participants, the impact of furloughs and leaves, and their own financial difficulties. READ MORE
The hidden way companies are paying women unfairly
That women are paid less than male colleagues is a stubborn fact in the U.S. workplace.
As of July, women earned 84 cents for every dollar a man earned. It is a discrepancy that has garnered significant attention from scholars, the media, and sex discrimination lawsuits. READ MORE
Are option grants promoting gender and racial inequity?
You’ve probably seen them on highway billboards and your Instagram feeds: startups promising to get it right on racial and gender inequity when it comes to employee pay. But how much progress has actually been made? Are companies even aware that upcoming stock option grants might worsen the very problem they claim to be fixing? READ MORE
Is now the time to raise the minimum wage? Economists debate
It has been 11 years since the federal minimum wage was increased, and Congress is weighing if now is the time to give minimum wage employees a raise. READ MORE
Compensation Issues in the Recovery: Setting CEO and Senior Management Compensation
Compensation during recovery from COVID-19 will be under great scrutiny, whether it’s from actions by executives and directors to reduce their own pay, short-term and long-term incentive considerations, or the recalibration of metrics for near-term incentives. This scrutiny will come from both internal and external sources as proxy advisers provide direction and boards take a second look at compensation models. READ MORE
Post-employment compensation – is it taxable?
When an employment relationship comes to an end, it is not unusual for the employer and the employee to negotiate and enter into a separation agreement to put in writing the employee’s benefits, entitlements and post-employment obligations. It may be within the leaving employee’s expectation that most of the payments under the termination agreement (such as accrued salary, payment in lieu of notice and annual leave pay) would be subject to salaries tax, but is this really the case for all compensation/benefits received from the employer after termination of employment? READ MORE
Lowe's shelling out $100M in coronavirus bonuses to hourly workers
Lowe's Companies Inc. announced Thursday that it would be doling out an additional round of bonuses to support employees "with unforeseen expenses and hardships" during the COVID-19 pandemic. READ MORE
Kodak’s top exec sees $200 million windfall on stock frenzy
The net worth of Kodak’s top executive has skyrocketed on the company’s transformation from an ailing camera maker to cutting-edge pharmaceutical start-up — thanks in part to some timely share purchases. READ MORE
ISS Publishes COVID-19 Case Study Focused on Executive Compensation Adjustments
The challenges presented to management and corporate boards from COVID-19 are significant. Among other considerations, companies might adjust 2020 performance goals, delay compensation decisions or change the mix of equity awards by making more full-value grants. In recent months, proxy advisors Institutional Shareholder Services (“ISS”) and Glass Lewis have published guidance with respect to these and other governance issues (summarized here and here). READ MORE
The importance of wage and hour audits
With so much uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, one step that business owners can take to regain control of their circumstances is to conduct an annual wage and hour audit of their practices and policies. As a business owner, you should be asking yourself these 10 questions at least once every year: READ MORE