Where is the Justice?

What is the most frustrating thing when working? No vacation? An irritating coworker? Most people would agree that it is when they are not paid; not just in the literal sense but also as in justice. People work to realize lifelong dreams, for self-actualization, or for fun.

But all these come after the most basic reason: to earn money. When this is not granted, one is bound to get angry. This is what happened when it was recently disclosed that CEOs have been paid tremendous amounts even when the economy was bad. The media and public ganged up to criticize their conduct. However, is it to be so harshly criticized?

There are many reasons CEOs get a huge sum of money. The main reason is of course, for their contribution. They serve the company day and night and have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders. It is only right to repay them for the effort they put in. This in turn gives encouragement to talented employees, who will look up to the CEOs and feel hopeful that they might be one of them someday.

This practice may also improve goodwill of the company. Goodwill is something that hugely depends on the doings of the CEO, as it is an intangible thing. Paying a lot of salary ensures that CEOs will work harder and thus put effort into increasing the future goodwill of the overall company.

Lastly, CEOs are a symbolic figure of the company as a whole. It may seem childish but the amount they are paid is something to take pride in. It generally means the greater the amount, the better the company’s situation. Therefore, when the ranking of the CEO’s salary was revealed, companies fought for the first place.

This is all very nice. The problem is that paying salary might drive the company into bankruptcy. The habit of paying a large salary is not in line with the company’s situation. Even with a deficit, some companies still made a big dent in their finance by giving out salary. This was also true for some companies that have been having financial trouble for quite a long time.

This is related to why employees might feel that they are unjustly paid. People put up with paying the CEO a considerable amount of salary because they believed that CEOs deserve it. But with the deficit, people and media are saying that they do not deserve a penny.

Moreover, the relative deprivation employees feel with this situation cannot be overlooked. The working hours and labor intensity of ordinary employees cannot be said to be far below that of the CEO. If the CEOs get paid a bunch of money but the employees get a salary cut, they would feel outrageous and relative deprivation.

Thus, how much CEOs should receive for their work remains to be discussed. One thing to keep in mind is that it should make everyone happy.