While you and I were fighting like feral dogs over heads of lettuce, the CEOs of Australia’s top 20 countries raked in huge pay rises in the last year.
Data compiled by Guardian Australia revealed just how much of a pay rise CEOs got in the last year and, in a surprise to absolutely no one, the numbers are fkn filthy.
CEO of pokies factory Aristocrat Leisure Trevor Croker saw his salary jump by 69 per cent, meaning his pay jumped from $4.46 million to $7.53 million. WTF!
NAB CEO Ross McEwan received the biggest pay rise in terms of percentage at almost 130 per cent, from a huge $2.31 million to an even bigger $5.29 million.
Mind you, McEwan was at that job for less than a year, and also took voluntarily pay cut and no bonus. And yet look at that huge number. Crying, screaming throwing up.
If you found that distressing, get a load of this: Macquarie Group CEO Shemara Wikramanayake, whose salary rose by 48.5 per cent, “earned” (I use that term loosely) $23.7 million. Twenty. Three. Million. Dollars. In one year.
If you earned $90,000 (which is the average salary for a full-time professional) for 50 years, you still would only make $4.5 million all up. These people are making more in a year than we could hope to in a lifetime.
The average raise all up for the CEOs in Guardian Australia’s round up was 17.16 per cent. Wanna know how much the average raise was for full-time workers? 1.9 per cent. And since inflation was 6.1 per cent, that means workers actually lost money — because their costs increased at a quicker pace than their pay. I want to say this is a tale as old as time, but it isn’t. It’s just as old as capitalism.
Teachers, nurses, grocery store workers, public transport officers — generally the very people who keep our society from collapsing in on itself — are still earning fuck all while CEOs are raking in mammoth profits.
Eat the rich.
