Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2014 July 23 - 29 [LABOR]

Pay gaps between company executives and workers growing

Disparities between executive salaries and employees’ wages have increased, Akahata reported on July 29.

Using corporate financial statements (FY 2013), Akahata picked up the top 20 companies which pay generous remunerations (excluding retirement allowances) to their directors and calculated the ratios of amounts of executive compensation to the average salaries in each company.

Of the 20 companies, disparities of salaries amounted to more than 50 times in 11 companies and 100 times in four companies. In FY 2010 when executive compensation more than 100 million yen a year started to be disclosed in financial statements, the pay gaps of eight and two companies exceeded 50 and 100 times respectively.

The highest paid executive is Nissan Motor CEO Carlos Ghosn, who received 995 million yen or 129.7 times more than the average wage of his employees. The second highest pay package was awarded to Frank Morich of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., 990 million yen or 104.9 times, followed by Okada Kazuo of Universal Entertainment Co., 810 million yen, 127.4 times.

In order to give a boost to Japan’s economy, the need now is to reverse the trend of growing wage disparities and to increase workers’ wages.