Equality über alles!

Please read these two stories carefully, kiddies. This looks like a an excellent place for the fascist right and the fascist left to find common ground and start shooting: EQUALITY. Normal people like us know it better as REVENGE.



From The Old Gray Whore:


Britain Looks to Address Inequality With Executive Pay Measures ...

London - Worried by a long-term rise in inequality, Britain announced on Tuesday a series of measures aimed at increasing transparency over executive compensation, hoping to ramp up pressure on companies that offer lavish salaries for bosses but restrict pay for regular employees.

The proposals include plans to force all publicly listed companies to publish their wage ratio, comparing their chief executive’s salary with that of the average worker, as well as the creation of a register that “names and shames” firms that faced shareholder opposition over executive pay levels.

In much of the Western world, public anger is growing over what critics say are excessive wages for senior business leaders. That has helped contribute to a populist backlash in many countries, as the gap between the salaries of employees and their managers has widened markedly.

In the United States, pay packages for top bosses grew last year, with the highest paid, Thomas M. Rutledge, the chief executive of Charter Communications, making $98 million. That was 2,617 times the average salary for American workers.

But it has become an increasing point of contention here.

In one case, investors in the energy company BP protested against the $19.6 million compensation package awarded to the company’s chief executive, Robert W. Dudley, in 2016 — a majority voted against the deal in a nonbinding vote. And the salary of Martin Sorrell, the head of the advertising giant WPP, regularly attracts pushback from shareholders. Mr. Sorrell made 48 million pounds, or about $62 million, last year.

That expanding gulf has spurred the government’s proposals, which it plans to put into effect by June. In addition to forcing the publication of pay ratios, officials would set up a public register listing companies that faced opposition on pay packages from at least a fifth of shareholders.

Listed businesses would be pushed to improve employee representation on their boards, by assigning a nonexecutive director to represent workers, creating an employee advisory council or nominating a director from the work force. There is no punishment for failing to do so, but companies would have to announce why they had not followed the requirements.

“Today’s reforms will build on our strong reputation and ensure our largest companies are more transparent and accountable to their employees and shareholders,” Greg Clark, Britain’s business secretary, said in a news release.

Over the weekend, Prime Minister Theresa May wrote in The Mail that some firms had “ignored the concerns of their shareholders by awarding pay rises to bosses that far outstrip the company’s performance.”

The changes are not entirely unique. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2015 required publicly traded corporations to begin providing standard information on pay disparities in 2018 (though the S.E.C. said in February that it might reconsider the measure). And in Germany, employees are often well represented on the supervisory boards of large companies.
Still, unions and analysts criticized the measures, arguing that they lacked teeth.

The Trades Union Congress, an umbrella organization of labor unions, derided the plans as a “box-ticking exercise,” while the opposition Labour Party said that the efforts could be easily ignored.

In particular, companies that are in labor-intensive industries or that employ large numbers of people in lower-paid jobs, like supermarkets, would look worse than investment banks, where average worker pay is higher.

“We’re punishing the companies that employ a lot of people,” Mr. Jenter said. “It in essence says you have a choice between employing low-paid employees in your companies — janitors, cleaners, drivers — or outsourcing the services to other companies or machines.”

Greg Campbell, a partner in the employment department at the law firm Mishcon de Reya, said the efforts to increase worker representation were also relatively mild, because company directors in Britain are already required to consider employee interests.
“A diversity of views is always worth having,” he said, “but I don’t think it is enough to really shift the dial.”

Still, some are hopeful that the measures will raise awareness of worsening inequality.

“This is obviously a more voluntary nudge approach to improve corporate governance, but I think there is no magic bullet,” said Ben Willmott, head of public policy at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. “Regulation can only take you so far because a lot of these issues are around organizational culture and leadership.”


Meanwhile, in another Third World hellhole, Namibia,...

Namibia's Wealth Redistribution Plan May Benefit Elite ... - Bloomberg

A plan by Namibia, among the world’s most economically unequal nations, to better distribute wealth among its citizens may end up the way neighboring South Africa’s has -- benefiting an elite minority.

The nation is working on a law that will require all businesses to be at least a quarter owned by “racially disadvantaged people.” While only about 6 percent of Namibia’s 2.5 million citizens are white, they own most enterprises. That’s a legacy of white-minority rule South Africa imposed when it controlled Namibia from World War I to 1990, with black people being disenfranchised and displaced.

Critics of South Africa’s policy, including the biggest labor-union federation, say it has failed to redress inequalities because it focuses on increasing black ownership of companies rather than raising education standards to match a skills shortage, and has benefited a small number of wealthy individuals. Proposals by Namibia, the world’s biggest marine-diamond producer, are similar, which could hamper investment and growth in an economy that’s contracted every quarter since March last year.

The plan “has caused much unease among white business owners and heightened investment uncertainty,” Gerrit van Rooyen, an analyst at NKC African Economics in Paarl, South Africa, said in an emailed response to questions. Both governments have to “create incentives to boost employment and stimulate investment. Black economic empowerment cannot succeed without job creation and wage growth.”

The New Equitable Economic Empowerment Framework Bill outlines six areas to increase black citizens’ participation in business, including developing people’s skills and providing financing for those disadvantaged by inequality to buy stakes in companies.

The Namibia Chamber of Commerce and Industry wants the focus on economic ownership scrapped, saying it will result in capital flight. It also calls for a rethink on employment equity, because it requires “formal racial classification and promotes racial polarization; blames white racism, brushes over complex causes of interracial inequality,” the NCCI said in its response to the proposed law.

The chamber suggests the bill should target “only the needy and disadvantaged,” and that selection criteria be based on “loyalty, restraint and goodwill and not on greed, tokenism and discrimination.” Namibia ranks alongside South Africa and Lesotho among the world’s most unequal societies in terms of distribution of income, according to Gini coefficients compiled by the CIA World Factbook.

The Law Reform and Development Commission is revising the bill and doesn’t yet know when the new version will be ready, said Yvonne Dausab, the body’s chairwoman.

The current version of the plan has helped see Namibia, the world’s fifth-biggest uranium producer, lose its spot as Africa’s second-most attractive jurisdiction for mining companies to invest in, based on policies, to Botswana, the Fraser Institute’s 2016 survey of 2,700 firms worldwide shows. Zimbabwe, which enacted legislation a decade ago that required all foreign or white-owned businesses to sell or cede 51 percent ownership to black nationals, is ranked last.

On June 19, Fitch Ratings Ltd. kept its assessment of Namibia’s foreign-currency debt at the lowest investment grade, saying the draft empowerment law represents a “modest risk” to the business and investment climate as uncertainties remain about what will ultimately be approved as legislation.

Almost two months later, Moody’s Investors Service cut its rating of the country’s debt to junk, citing a “material” decrease in the country’s fiscal strength, with public debt reaching 42 percent of gross domestic product from 26 percent when the company first assigned a rating in 2011. It has the assessment on a negative outlook, which means the next move could be another cut, saying that a change of investment sentiment is among risks to the rating.
Besides the empowerment law, Namibia is proposing legislation that will limit foreign ownership of land, and it has signed an investment promotion act that will reserve some business activities for black Namibians, Van Rooyen said.

“The government seems to be shifting towards nativist and protectionist policies, which typically discourages foreign investment and impedes economic growth,” he said.


TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.