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More than 1,000 publicly traded companies have disclosed their fiscal 2017 pay CEO-to-worker comparisons to investors this year, with thousands more set to file as proxy season heats up.
At least nine companies have disclosed ratios greater than 1,000-to-1 thus far. And more filings are trickling into the Securities and Exchange Commission every day, meaning that number is likely to grow.
A number of companies that employ mostly part-time or seasonal workers and offer comparatively high CEO pay have landed in the upper-echelon of ratios.
In any company with lots of seasonal or part-time workers or a lot of turnover, “you’re going to have very high ratios,” Deborah Lifshey, a managing director at pay consultant Pearl Meyer, told Bloomberg Law.
“It’s hard to avoid and I’m not sure there’s an answer except that most people expect that companies like McDonald’s and Walmart Inc. and other large retailers depend heavily on those kinds of workers," Lifshey said. “It’s part of the business model. The ratio might be higher, but that’s not always a bad thing.”