Portland's 'Million Dollar Baby' gets even richer in retirement

Progressive evangelical preacher, Jim Wallis, writes about the moral dimensions of economic policy.  In defending the Employee Free Choice Act, Wallis invokes memories of his father --a negotiator for Detroit Edison-- and argues that the EFCA levels the playing field between employer and employee:

"And the great chasm that has now grown between CEO salaries and that of average workers, I know, would have appalled and offended my father."

The chasm is huge. 

"In 1965, U.S. CEOs at major companies made 24 times a worker's pay-by 2004, CEOs earned 431 times the pay of an average worker. ...  While CEO pay continues to increase at rates far exceeding inflation, wages for the vast majority of American workers have failed to keep up with rising prices.  In fact, real wages for the 90% of Americans who earn under $92,000 a year have actually fallen since 2001."

Enter Portland's own "million dollar baby", retiring PGE CEO, Peggy Fowler.  Even she seems embarrassed by --and defensive of-- the generous terms of her golden parachute.  "It pales," she said, in comparison to the bounty bestowed on her predecessor.  Besides that, she argues, "analysts" demand competitive pay for the CEO's of "performing" companies."

Maybe so.  But who has PGE been "performing" for?  Not it's stockholders, who have seen the value of their stock drop 40% since the company went public.  Not ratepayers, either.  According to Bob Jenks of the Citizen's Utility Board,

"PGE already has among the highest electric rates of any utility in the region, he said. It earned more than its allowed rate of return in 2007, and the Oregon Public Utility Commission granted the utility a 7.6 percent increase in 2008."

In reality, says Jenks, we --the ratepayers-- have been "paying Peggy to build up her retirement."

Let's say the average hourly wage for PGE workers is $40, meaning an annual income of $83K.  (It isn't, of course, even for the unionized segment of the workforce.  This website for PGE  customer technical services pegs it hourly pay at $16.72 ...with no benefits.)  But anyway, say you did make that $83K a year, probably as a skilled electrician/lineman with years of experience.  

That's still only about a tenth of what Peggy Fowler is going to make in retirement.

Comments

[howard]

A few years ago PGE became independent of ENRON by selling shares to the public at $30 per. Today those shares are selling around $16.50. Worse yet the PGE board is financing its Biglow Canyon Wind Energy project by selling 11 million shares of stock at a price of $14.10.

Peggy's package surely is not based on what she has done for the shareholders.