Aetna's
choosing to pay some employees more than the going rate.
Business schools preach a strict, anti-social doctrine of
corporate management that comes down to this: CEOs must be idiots.
By that I mean the original Greek word idiotes, which applied
to people who care only about themselves and the prosperity of their immediate
family. They’re the ones who reject any responsibility to the larger society,
civic affairs, and the common good.
That selfish ethos is what prevails in today’s corporate suites,
where it’s claimed that the only responsibility of executives is to maximize
profits for the “family” — that is, for themselves and their major
shareholders.
If they have to stiff workers, sidestep environmental rules, and
shaft consumers to do it, well, that’s the lot of idiotes.
But now comes an apostate to this doctrinal idiocy.
Mark Bertolini, corporate chief of the health insurance giant Aetna, says CEOs should raise the minimum wage their companies pay to a level approaching minimal fairness. Rather than just calling for it, though, he actually did it. He lifted Aetna’s lowest wage to$16 an hour, plus improved health benefits.
Then Bertolini really gave up the game: He publicly revealed
that these increases aren’t so financially painful after all.
The total cost to Aetna will be about $26 million a
year. That’s nothing for a company with annual revenues of $62 billion.
The only pain Bertolini might feel is loneliness when he enters
the CEO Club and sees other insurance chieftains turn their backs and
shun him over his leadership on the moral matter of shared prosperity.
Indeed, the CEOs of Humana, Anthem, and other insurers say “no”
to raises for their employees, sniffing that they pay “competitive wages” —
which is just a dishonest way of saying “low wages.”
Whether those idiotes like it or not, Aetna
just lifted the national standard for competitive wages.
Moreover, the insurer has thrown open the doors of the executive
suites to an honest public conversation about the morality of the suits inside
jacking up their compensation while holding down everyone else’s pay.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is
a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also editor of the
populist newsletter, The Hightower
Lowdown. OtherWords.org.