Executive Salaries

The current world economic downturn again brings into sharp relief the level of remuneration of senior executive of large companies or corporations particularly where remuneration levels remain high when employees are being made redundant and or the corporation has suffered significant trading and business losses. American Sol Trujillo's remuneration for the Australian telecommunications company, Telstra is one such example. Trujillo's remuneration package in 2006 was $8.71M, then in 2007 it was $11.7M climbing to $13.4M in 2008 and he will leave the company mid year with a reported more than $30M payout. Telstra's share price has fallen during this period, it was ruled out of the tender for the national broadband network and has made redundant thousands of employees. Where is the logic of all this?

Yet this is minor compared with the stories coming out of Wall Street where financial institutions are receiving extraordinary bailouts courtesy of the American taxpayer, yet many of those responsible for the debt crisis have yet to be brought to account and have retained their massive earnings.