Author: Site Staff

Five members of Congress showed that you don’t have to be a presidential candidate to propose health care reform.

Speaking at a health care forum at the New School in New York on Monday, October 29, the four senators and one congressman agreed that a change in the employer-sponsored health care system is needed, though they differed on the details.

All said increased openness in the price and quality of health care are necessary to reduce costs.

“We don’t have health care transparency,” said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah. “So we don’t know who has the best quality and the lowest cost.”

The forum was titled “Reforming Healthcare: The Latest Solutions from the United States Congress,” though it was far from clear whether any proposals were either politically or economically feasible.

Republicans—echoing proposals by President Bush and presidential candidates Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani—said offering tax deductions for individuals to purchase health insurance would eliminate a bias toward employer-sponsored health benefits.

Bennett and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said the Healthy Americans Act, a proposal they co-sponsored last year, is the first plan to sever ties between employment and health insurance. Employers would be forced to pay the amount they currently spend on health care as wage increases to workers. 

The plan would create regional health care pools from which people would be required to buy health insurance. Employers would not provide health insurance or manage it. They could make a regional health insurance product available to employees. But the tax deduction employers receive for providing health care would be eliminated.

“If you are in control of health care, you do not have to stay stuck in a job you hate,” Bennett said.

To which former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, president of the New School, later said, “I know employees who are only here because they need the health insurance.”
 
Tax deductions for individuals purchasing health insurance are a feature common to health plans proposed by Sens. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, and Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, who also is a physician. Tax deductions could make it cheaper for employees to insure themselves rather than pay the premiums offered by an employer.

Burr’s plan, called the Every American Insured Health Act, gives Americans a flat tax refund of $2,160 for individuals and $5,400 for families, similar to the tax credit proposed by President Bush in his 2007 State of the Union address.

Burr said the tax credit would create a financial incentive for Americans to purchase the kind of coverage they need. With the aid of cost-and-quality information about health plans and doctors, Americans would have a financial incentive “to go out and negotiate coverage” that fits their medical budgetary needs.

Burr is also a co-sponsor of Coburn’s bill, the Health Care Choice Act of 2007. The plan introduces tax breaks for individuals purchasing health care and increases the taxes that can be deducted for contributions to health savings accounts.

Coburn said he opposes individual mandates that require people to buy health insurance, which have been used in Massachusetts and are compared to laws requiring drivers to carry auto insurance. Coburn said 15 percent of drivers don’t buy insurance despite the mandate.

“Mandates don’t work,” he said.

The plan by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Michigan, to create a single-payer government-run health care system drew the most enthusiastic response from the audience at the New School, which bills itself as a “progressive” university whose goal is “to prepare and inspire its 9,300 undergraduate and graduate students to bring actual, positive change to the world. “

The United States National Health Insurance Act would pay for a single-payer health care system with what Conyers calls a “modest” 3.3 percent payroll tax per employee. Employees and employers would pay a payroll tax of 1.45 percent. The wealthiest 5 percent of Americans would pay a “health income tax.”

Though Coburn said the taxes needed to fund such an entitlement program had been underestimated, Conyers said health care was a “human right,” and that the employer-based system was part of the problem.

Conyers said he wants to “take the profit motive out of health insurance and make it a human right.”

—Jeremy Smerd

In a move to establish itself as a dominant force in hourly staffing software, Kronos announced Wednesday, October 31, that it is acquiring Deploy Solutions, a provider of selection and hiring software.

The purchase is strategically significant not only because Kronos can broaden its portfolio of services or gain access to a set of high-profile clients that includes Home Depot, Securitas and retailer Wawa, but also because Kronos now controls the top two providers of hourly staffing software—Unicru, which was bought last year, and now Deploy.

“I’m not going to lie: It is always a good day when you are able to take one of your main competitors out of the market” said Jim Kizielewicz, senior vice president of corporate strategy and chief marketing officer at Kronos.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Industry observers say the acquisition is a mixed bag. From the perspectives of Kronos and Newton, Massachusetts-based Deploy, it makes sense. Deploy gets to benefit from the Kronos brand and the company’s ability to create market buzz that could help to drive up revenue. Meanwhile, Deploy can offer Kronos its innovative software, says Naomi Bloom, managing partner at Bloom & Wallace, a consulting firm in Fort Myers, Florida.

Clients, however, run the risk that ongoing consolidation will stifle innovation in an industry that desperately needs a shot of creativity.

“The hourly staffing software space is in desperate need of new ideas,” says Jason Averbook, CEO of consulting firm Knowledge Infusion. “These types of big consolidation moves often create a mishmash of functionalities that creates confusion among clients and dulls innovation.”

Kizielewicz says that one of Deploy’s attributes as an acquisition target is its ability to be creative, and that the company will implement measures to make sure that innovation doesn’t go by the wayside. One such step will be to leave Deploy as an independent company, following in the footsteps of the Unicru acquisition.

“We pretty much left Unicru alone to do its own thing and expect to do the same in this case,” Kizielewicz says. “Deploy, along with Unicru, will form part of the independent Kronos Talent Management Division.”

Some market analysts question the acquisition because Unicru and Deploy deliver similar capabilities. But Kizielewicz says that while both companies are in the business of hourly staffing software services, their strong suits are very different.

Kronos is adept in assessment technology and analytic capabilities, which can help an employer select high-potential candidates and compare the company’s talent management performance with that of industry competitors. Meanwhile, Deploy’s forte lies in its core technology platform, which runs the system, Kizielewicz explains.

“We plan to combine the strongest elements of each company,” he says.

Despite Kronos’ well-defined strategy for domination, players like Vurv Technology and Taleo should stay on their toes, industry observers say.

The consolidation creates an opportunity for those rivals to innovate, Averbook contends. “They are smaller, which allows them to be faster,” he says.

Averbook says creativity is scarce in hourly staffing, particularly when it comes to meeting the expectations of Gen Yers, a key hourly applicant pool. “Right now, the providers haven’t even begun to address the needs of these individuals,” he notes.

—Gina Ruiz

Halloween is a good day to share scary stories. Here are five tales of HR horror from Halogen Software, a performance management company. Halogen chose today to release a survey on employee-appraisal nightmares. Pray these creatures don’t haunt your office:

• The mother of a 20-something worker who told HR that her son’s review score should be raised so that he could get a better raise. “She offered to come in and show me reference letters from his teachers and former employers to reinforce her story,” the respondent wrote.

• The boss who said his all-female work group reminded him of a bunch of mares scratching and biting each other. The respondent said the boss’s daughter rode horses, “so I guess he thought that was a good analogy.”

• The reviewer who wrote of an employee: “Bob did pretty good for an old guy.”

• The manager who copied his 12 employees’ self-appraisals … and submitted them as his own.

• The nurse who was being evaluated on how well she delivered medications and told her supervisor she followed what the voices in her head told her to do.

Can you top those? If so, send a note to editors@workforce.com.

The recently ratified contract between General Motors and the United Auto Workers, details of which were disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission, underscores the precariousness of future retiree health care benefits.

On one hand, analysts say, the deal to transfer $35 billion to an independent trust to manage retiree health care is the best deal the union could have made given the dire financial straits of General Motors. The union will receive 70 cents for every dollar owed to it—allowing GM to offload about $47 billion in liabilities.

At the same time, the deal is based on assumptions that greatly underestimate the cost of health care.

The contract, which remains subject to court and regulatory approval, is based on the assumption that health care costs will grow 5 percent annually—a growth rate significantly slower than in the past 25 years.

From 1970 to 2004, Medicare costs increased an average of 9.1 percent annually. For private sector payers, health care costs increased an average 10.1 percent annually. Gerard Anderson, director of the Center for Hospital Finance and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says such an assumption leaves in doubt the UAW’s ability to pay for retiree health care for the next 80 years, as union leaders have promised.

“The economic trends would suggest it’s not viable in the long run,” Anderson says of the union’s health care trust, known as a voluntary employees beneficiary association.

To make the fund financially sustainable, the union must put its faith in the financial markets, where it will look for returns on par with some of the best-performing institutional investors.

According to GM’s filings, the current health trust is funded based on an expected 9 percent return on investment of the funds assets. That rate of return equals the 10-year return of 9.1 percent for CalPERS, the California state employee pension fund.

Another variable complicating the union’s funding of future retiree health care benefits is that 75 percent of GM’s 74,500 union workers could retire by the end of the four-year contract, significantly adding to the rolls of health care beneficiaries, which today total more than 500,000 people.

The 5 percent estimate is a common accounting technique used by many employers to calculate future health care costs, a GM spokeswoman says, since actual long-term projections yield numbers that are unsustainable for the economy.

In 2005, health care costs totaled 15 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. That number is expected to grow to 20 percent of GDP by 2015.

But VEBA consultant Lance Wallach says the 5 percent increase in health care costs is deceptive, even if it is a necessary target. For most people, especially blue-collar retirees, health care cost increases are significantly higher.

“That’s not even ridiculous, it’s preposterous,” he says of the 5 percent projection. “I’m not just talking for these people, but for anybody.”

—Jeremy Smerd

Using a compensation consultant is seen by many CEOs as a good business practice to get a fair price for executive pay.

No wonder, according to a study released by The Corporate Library, which found that companies using consultants award their CEOs higher compensation and at levels that don’t relate to increased shareholder return.

In fact, those companies that disclosed the use of compensation consultants in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission were found to have slightly less total shareholder return than those that did not disclose using such consultants. After a regression analysis, the result was a wash—shareholder returns were not found to be any better off for the use of the consultants.

Study author Alexandra Higgins admitted that the study’s results are far from proving that compensation consultants are part of the problem with rising CEO pay. However, she wrote that the findings indicate that such consultants do not increase the effectiveness of incentive plans.

“We did see some patterns,” Higgins says.

The study, which examined 2,583 company filings from February to May, found that 51 percent of the companies disclosed the name of their executive compensation consultant. Twenty-nine percent of those companies used Towers Perrin, 22 percent used Mercer and 19 percent Hewitt Associates. SEC rules now require companies to disclose which compensation consultant they use for executive pay.

Pearl Meyer, which was used by 8 percent of the reporting companies, was found to be the consultancy that led to the highest CEO base salary, at an average of almost 19 percent above median CEO salaries among peer companies. Towers Perrin, Mercer and Hewitt were the next in line for high CEO pay, coming in at roughly 17 percent, 15 percent and 15 percent above the median, respectively.

Bonuses and equity awards to executives boomed among companies using consultants. For example, CEOs of companies that used Frederic W. Cook saw an average bonus pay of 194 percent of salary. Pearl Meyer was the leader in terms of favoring equity compensation, paying on average 198 percent of company targets for the maximum number of shares. Companies and compensation consultants set such targets for equity, but often pay more than those targets.

The leading consulting firms were not consistently at the top of compensation in all areas, though. Towers Perrin and Hewitt, both in the top three for doling out the highest base salaries, were among the bottom four firms for the value of stock options granted. That is likely due to philosophical differences among the consultants, in that some may see cash as a higher incentive while others think equity awards are better for execs, Higgins says.

Compensation consultants have come under fire from unions and shareholder groups. One of the most notable examples was Hewitt Associates, which was used by Wyeth and Verizon. After Verizon’s unions challenged the company’s compensation levels and the work done by Hewitt, as well as ties between the boards of Verizon and Wyeth, the telecom giant dumped the firm as its consultant in 2006 and Wyeth chose another consultant in April.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California), the feared chair of the House Oversight Committee, earlier this year began an investigation into the leading consulting companies over alleged conflicts of interest in setting executive pay. That investigation is still ongoing, sources say.

This story was filed by Nicholas Rummell of Financial Week, a sister publication to Workforce Management.

A bill that would ban workplace discrimination against homosexuals has drawn a veto threat from the Bush administration on the eve of likely House action on the legislation.

As the House prepares to take up the Employment Nondiscrimination Act on Wednesday, October 24, the White House announced its opposition to the bill, which would extend the same rights to gay, lesbian and bisexual people that exist for gender, race and ethnicity.

The measure prohibits employers from basing hiring, firing, promotion or compensation decisions on sexual orientation. Last week, the House Education and Labor Committee approved the bill, 27-21, mostly along party lines.

In its statement of policy, the White House criticized the bill for using “imprecise and subjective terms that would make interpretation, compliance and enforcement extremely difficult,” echoing concerns outlined by Republicans on the House committee who opposed the measure.

“For instance, the bill establishes liability for acting on ‘perceived’ sexual orientation, or ‘association’ with individuals of a particular sexual orientation,” the White House said. “If passed, [the bill] is virtually certain to encourage burdensome litigation beyond the cases that the bill is intended to reach.”

The administration also asserted that the bill would curb religious liberties because its exemptions for religious organizations are too weak. Other objections centered on the bill allowing the federal government to seek civil damages against state entities and on provisions that would “purport to give federal statutory significance to same-sex marriage rights under state law.”

Despite White House opposition, the bill is likely to win narrow House approval. That outcome was bolstered when Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts and the bill’s author, removed provisions from the original bill that would extend protections to transgender people.

A measure including that dimension would not have garnered enough support from conservative Democrats to achieve House approval. In failing to address transgender policy, however, the current bill will lose support from some liberals.

To assuage their resentment, a transgender amendment is likely to be offered during floor deliberations.

In some respects, corporations are ahead of this public policy debate. About 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies have inclusive employment policies that encompass sexual orientation. In addition, 46 big companies supported the original sexual orientation bill.

During last week’s committee action, Rep. George Miller, D-California and chairman of the House labor panel, praised large corporations such as General Mills, Cisco Systems, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Citibank, Morgan Stanley and Time Warner for implementing inclusive employment policies that cover sexual orientation.

“While this is an encouraging trend, our entire workforce and our nation’s competitiveness will benefit from making sure that every state and all large workplaces are covered,” Miller said.

But the side of the aisle most often associated with big business is resisting the bill. “The legislation raises several complex questions about how it would impact employers, whether it would encroach on employee privacy, and how it comports with existing anti-discrimination statutes,” said Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-California and the labor panel’s highest-ranking Republican.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest employer group in the nation, is neutral toward the bill. It does not take a position on gender identity.

Its concerns about the broader bill were addressed when language was removed that potentially would have allowed local governments to mandate that companies provide benefits for same-sex partners.

“Our approach has been to be sure that the bill provides appropriate protection without unintended consequences,” said Michael Eastman, the chamber’s executive director of labor law policy.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Gevity HR Inc., a national professional employer organization, has replaced its CEO after disappointing financial results and a sharp slide in its stock price.

A few years ago, Bradenton, Florida-based Gevity and CEO Erik Vonk were hot properties in the field of “co-employment,” a specialized niche in which companies turn over most staffing and human resources functions, including payroll and benefits administration, to an outside company. But over the past two years, the company has tried to branch out into other staffing fields, with limited success.

On Friday, October 19, the company announced that Vonk, its CEO and chairman since 2002, was stepping down, and that COO Michael Lavington would take over both positions. Lavington, a British citizen whom the company appointed COO in August, still needs to finalize U.S. work authorization before he can officially take up his post.

The leadership switch is the latest in a series of recent business and executive changes at the company that have thus far done little to assure investors that Gevity is back on track. The company’s stock traded as high as $30 a share in early 2006. But after Gevity reported lower-than-expected revenue and earnings in June, the stock tumbled to a low of $9.85 in September, and has been trading recently at around $11.

Vonk, who in February was recognized as one of HRO Today’s 2007 “superstars in human resources outsourcing,” found himself the brunt of criticism from Wall Street for the company’s poor financial performance.

“The biggest problem the company has had is its inability to drive sales,” says Gary E. Bisbee, a Lehman Bros. analyst who covers the business and professional services sector. “Somebody has to take the blame for that.”

Vonk’s departure follows that of Peter Grabowski, who resigned as senior vice president of national sales in July.

Gevity’s problems stemmed in part from the full-service nature of its operation. Gevity has traditionally been a company that serves as a “co-employer” of workers at small and midsize companies, providing benefits like health and workers’ compensation insurance.

Vonk tried to move the company into staffing services without health and workers’ compensation insurance, hoping to find a more stable and simpler business model. But the effort backfired, as some clients left and the company faced lower revenues and profits.

“A primary goal of the former CEO was to get the business out of the co-employment model,” Bisbee says. “As the company took several steps toward that goal, they clearly created periods of very big turnover among their existing clients.”

Bisbee viewed Vonk’s departure and the arrival of Lavington as a welcome sign that Gevity will renew its emphasis on the co-employer model, a specialty that Gevity knows and understands.

But while Gevity will continue to offer co-employer services, it will likely continue looking to expand into other niches, according to Patrick Lee, Gevity’s director of investor relations.

“An increased emphasis on co-employment does not necessarily represent a departure from other HR products,” Lee says. “In fact, we intend to continue developing additional offerings while strengthening our co-employed business.”

Irwin Speizer is a contributing editor for Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.
 

Odds are if you’re an employer doing business along the Atlantic or Pacific Coast, you’re having to dig deep into your compensation coffer to attract white-collar workers, according to the third-quarter Executive Job Market Trends report, put out by New York-based job board TheLadders.com.

The study ranks cities according to the number of employment openings with salaries of $100,000 or more versus the number of individuals actively seeking jobs in this high income bracket. San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; and San Diego made up the top three. For job seekers in those cities, this means an easier time finding coveted positions paying $100,000 and up. But for local employers—the likes of Google, Fannie Mae and Qualcomm—it translates into having to pay top dollar for talent.

The cities on the list do not come as a surprise to HR experts, given the areas’ high price tags for real estate and basics such as food and gas.

“The cost of living tends to be very high in these places,” IDB analyst Lisa Rowan says. “Employers are going to have to compensate adequately so that workers can afford to live there.”

Furthermore, cities like Boston (No. 4 on the list) and San Francisco are big hubs for employers in finance, IT and biotech—sectors where the demand for highly specialized talent tends to outstrip the number of qualified workers. As such, the tables are generally in favor of employees when it comes to hammering out compensation agreements.

“They can command high salaries because there is a distinct dearth of talent in certain industries,” says John Roderick, spokesman for TheLadders.com. “Employers are willing do whatever it takes to attract much-needed talent.”

Roderick, however, has a word of caution for companies planning to attract employees solely on the basis of a hefty paycheck. “It won’t be enough,” he says. “This group of workers is very discerning and is willing to wait for the right opportunity.”

Roderick says that besides adequate compensation, this elite talent pool is looking for companies with a strong brand, job stability and a sterling reputation.

—Gina Ruiz

In a historic vote, a House committee approved a bill on Thursday, October 18, banning workplace discrimination against homosexuals.

The measure would extend the same rights to gay, lesbian and bisexual people that exist for gender, race and ethnicity. It prohibits employers from basing hiring, firing, promotion or compensation decisions on sexual orientation.

The vote was the first ever on sexual-orientation discrimination legislation. But the bill that passed the House Education and Labor Committee in a 27-21 vote was narrower than the one that was introduced in April. The original included protections for transgender people.

The bill’s author, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, decided to remove the gender identity portion because there was not enough support in the House to pass a broader bill.

When it reaches the House floor in coming weeks, the new bill will have to overcome opposition not only from religious conservatives, who proposed four amendments that failed in committee, but also from liberals who contend that the bill is too weak without the gender identity language.

In the committee, four Republicans supported the bill and three Democrats opposed it in what was otherwise a party-line vote.

Supporters say a federal statute would close a gap created by the 30 states that do not have sexual orientation discrimination laws on their books.

“It is hard to believe that otherwise fully qualified, bright and capable individuals are being denied employment or fired from their jobs for … completely nonwork-related reasons,” said Rep. George Miller, D-California and committee chairman. “This is profoundly unfair and, indeed, un-American.”

Miller praised large corporations such as General Mills, Cisco Systems, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Citibank, Morgan Stanley and Time Warner for implementing inclusive employment policies that cover sexual orientation. About 46 big companies supported the original sexual orientation bill.

“While this is an encouraging trend, our entire workforce and our nation’s competitiveness will benefit from making sure that every state and all large workplaces are covered,” Miller said.

But the side of the aisle most often associated with big business is resisting the bill. Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-California and the panel’s highest-ranking Republican, said, “The legislation raises several complex questions about how it would impact employers, whether it would encroach on employee privacy, and how it comports with existing anti-discrimination statutes.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest employer group in the nation, is neutral toward the bill. It does not take a position on gender identity.

But its concerns about the broader bill were addressed when language was removed that potentially would have allowed local governments to mandate that companies provide benefits for same-sex partners.

“Our approach has been to be sure that the bill provides appropriate protection without unintended consequences,” said Michael Eastman, executive director of labor law policy at the Chamber of Commerce.

The business community’s equanimity is not shared by conservative Republicans, who strenuously oppose the bill.

Rep. Mark Souder, R-Indiana, asserted that language referring to “actual or perceived sexual orientation” could potentially drag employers into court to defend against a vaguely defined term.

“If we get into the whole question of what’s perceived, we’re going down the road of an incredible litigation nightmare,” Souder said.

Souder argued that the bill would effectively curb religious freedom to express opposition to homosexual lifestyles. He and other colleagues said it also would threaten religious organizations.

“This bill is an aggressive attack on people of faith and faith-based institutions in this country,” said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Michigan.

But Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Virginia, said the exemptions provided for religious organizations are stronger in the sexual orientation bill than they are in existing discrimination law.

Rep. Danny Davis, D-Illinois, cited the Golden Rule in defending the bill. “The most basic of all human desires is the desire to be treated fairly with respect, with equal opportunity and with equal protection under the law,” he said.

But there was opposition to the bill from Davis’ side of the aisle, too. Some Democrats said it should have included gender identity. “This legislation is incomplete,” said Yvette Clark, D-New York.

Some who expressed the same concern but voted for the bill anyway said they will support a gender identity amendment during the House floor debate.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.
 

Proposed legislation to give investors an advisory vote on executive pay, if passed, would lead to the unintended consequences of messy litigation and more lawmaking from Congress, according to Michael Oxley, vice chairman of Nasdaq and a former Republican representative from Ohio.

Addressing an audience at the annual National Association of Corporate Directors conference in Washington on Tuesday, October 16, Oxley said that the so-called say-on-pay proposal currently floated by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts and chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, “will not stop at a nonbinding vote” because there are so many unanswered questions as to how the process would actually work.

Oxley said that while Frank has said to “take the proposal simply at face value,” the Senate would likely have to make amendments to the proposal, as boards try to determine what their responsibilities are if shareholders vote against their pay programs.

“Litigation would not be far behind the Senate,” Oxley suggested.

Say on pay, and executive compensation in general, was very much on the minds of the roughly 600 conference attendees. Having just completed the first proxy season under new Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules, much of the focus has turned to 2008—an election year in which executive compensation will likely be a flashpoint issue (presidential hopeful Barack Obama, D-Illinois, created a companion bill to Frank’s).

In a morning session on top proxy issues for next year, Patrick McGurn, special counsel to proxy advisor Institutional Shareholder Services, said the say-on-pay issue—along with proxy access for shareholders to nominate directors—will likely give way to a confrontation between investors and companies if directors don’t immediately reach out and begin discussions with key shareholders.

“The clock is now ticking, and there’s limited time before consensus can be made,” he said, or it “will be mandated like Sarbanes-Oxley.”

A consensus, of course, will be tough. McGurn noted that while 85 percent of investors support a say-on-pay vote, 95 percent of corporate directors are against it.

Later, in a session on executive pay, Pearl Meyer, senior managing director at compensation consulting firm Steven Hall & Partners, said, “Say on pay is going to put us into a morass” and that it would be a huge bonanza for proxy advisory firms like ISS and Glass Lewis.

“If it [the proposal] goes through, buy stock in [ISS parent] Risk Metrics,” she said.

On the same panel, Michael McCauley, director of investment services and communications at the State Board of Administration of Florida, noted that more communication between board members and shareholders is “extremely important” to solving the pay problem.

Many companies are still “very defensive” and “would rather we go away,” he said. “Please talk to your shareholders, have a dialogue and disclose more and we’ll all be better off.”

Filed by Jeff Nash of Financial Week, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com