Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 27, 1995                   TAG: 9508250089
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: G2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

UNFAIR

In 1974, chief executive officers were making in salary and compensation some 35 times what their companies' average workers were taking home.

Today, the big cheese gets 135 times his average employees' compensation.

Is there something wrong with this?

In a word: Yes.

To be sure, many factors help explain the widening wage gap, some of which are inescapable and have little to do with ethics. Basically, a global, competitive marketplace and knowledge-based economy are according greater value to certain kinds of skills, ostensibly associated with CEOs, than to skills associated with traditional kinds of production and service work.

Why has the male American with a high- school diploma seen his real (inflation-adjusted) income decline by a third over the past two decades? A principal reason is international competition from businesses that can perform low-skill work with lower labor costs.

There's no getting around it. The answer isn't protectionism. The answer is to raise skill levels to become internationally competitive. (Or to go into jobs serving those who are.)

It would be terribly wrong, though, to regard all this as simply a market phenomenon that is entirely ineluctable and neutral.

For one thing, it simply isn't true that government can do nothing to ease and facilitate the transition to higher-skilled - wthus higher-wage - work. Government can do a lot, starting with better and continuous education. A higher minimum wage would help also.

Nor should anyone believe that the widening wage gap has no moral dimension. In the 1980s, the productivity of U.S. businesses increased by 12 percent. Wages during the same period went up by 2 percent. That's wrong.

A lot of the downsizing in corporate America has been made necessary by bad management - in many cases, atrocious management. Yet wealthy executives continue to win lavish bonuses while laying off thousands of workers. They owe more to their employees, and to their communities.