Take $90,000, leave $90,000. (via)
He might be the only person in America to admit it, but Raymond Burse has enough money.
Burse is the interim president for Kentucky State University, and when he took on the job again (he was the acting president from 1982-1989 before becoming a 17-year GE exec, and is only back until they find a permanent replacement) he had a meaningful goal in mind: to make sure that the lowest paid employees didn't just receive minimum wage, but a livable wage.
Right now the minimum wage is $7.25/hr, so to get every employee up to what he heard was a livable $10.25/hr, he found the money in his own paycheck. That's over $90,000 he arranged to have redistributed from his $349,869 annual paycheck.
"My whole thing is I don't need to work," Burse told Lexington Herald-Leader. "This is not a hobby, but in terms of the people who do the hard work and heavy lifting, they are at the lower pay scale."
Burse's salary is now set at $259,745.
His pay cut is not a poke at other university presidents to follow suit, he said.
"I was in a position where I could do that," he said. "That is not always the case."
And maybe no one should be expecting those in the education sector to be redistributing funds, but that doesn't mean it couldn't, nay, shouldn't, happen elsewhere. I'm looking at you, fat cat CEOs.
Wal-Mart's CEOs make 1,034 times more than the average Wal-Mart employee.
The same study found that for Target, the CEO to worker pay is 597:1, for McDonalds it is 431:1, and for Disney, 557:1.
Disney! What are you really teaching our kids? So many of their programs include messages of generosity and care for others. What profitable messages those turned out to be.
Burse gave up more than a quarter of his salary so that the people keeping his organization afloat could keep themselves afloat. "This is not a publicity stunt," he said. "You don't give up $90,000 for publicity. I did this for the people. This is something I've been thinking about from the very beginning."
I've been thinking about it too. Isn't this what we've all been thinking the super wealthy should do? Thanks for going first, Raymond Burse. Wanna take a stab at this whole Israel/Palestine thing?
(by Myka Fox)