CEO Salaries Climb as Companies Fight Pay-Scale Disclosure Law

Top corporate executives are getting richer than ever as regular workers suffer pay-scale setbacks, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Fortune 500 chief executive officers now make 204 times what regular workers bring home, a 20 percent increase just since 2009, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. According to the data compiled by the business-news service, that ratio is up from 120-to-1 in 2000, 42-to-1 in 1980, and 20-to-1 in 1950.

The Bloomberg report was compiled from industry-specific estimates for worker compensation, because more than three years after Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act — which requires public companies to reveal actual CEO-to-worker pay ratios — the companies are still fighting it.

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"It’s a simple piece of information shareholders ought to have," said Phil Angelides of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that investigated the 2008 economic collapse. "The fact that corporate executives wouldn’t want to display the number speaks volumes," he said.

The Bloomberg report was published after the S&P 500 reached a record high, an event that highlights the fact that while companies are making historic profits on the heels of the Great Recession, average workers are still not benefiting from those financial gains.

"When CEOs switched from asking the question of 'How much is enough?' to 'How much can I get?', investor capital and executive talent started scrapping like hyenas for every morsel," Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, told Bloomberg. “It’s not that either hates labor, or wants to crush their lives. They just don’t care.”