The Guardian 14 November, 2007
Workers lose $812 per year
but Solomon Trujillo up $22 million!
The fact that Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo will get a $22 million pay packet this year while one million working families will get a real pay cut of up to $800 shows the unfairness of the Howard Government’s Work Choices IR laws said the ACTU.
ACTU President Sharan Burrow said: "CEO pay bonuses like this one for Telstra boss Sol Trujillo are obscene.
"Australian working families are struggling to cope with interest rates rises and the effect of Work Choices."
Last week Professor Ian Harper, the head of the Howard Government’s new wages-setting body confirmed that real wages for more than a million low paid workers have fallen by up to $15.67 a week or $814 a year under Work Choices this year.
This is another sign that Work Choices is taking Australia down the United States path of large numbers of workers earning poverty-level wages while a small number of executives earn outrageous multi-million dollar bonuses.
"John Howard and Peter Costello keep telling us that Australia’s economy is doing well but under Work Choices working families are not seeing the benefits of this prosperity", said Ms Burrows.
Mr Trujillo has had a "colourful" career in business prior to his lucrative stint at Telstra:
Before moving to Australia he resigned as CEO of US WEST, Inc. just before the company became the subject of a Federal Criminal Probe for overstating company profits by nearly a billion dollars. He was not charged by the US Justice department and has continued to deny any knowledge of accounting irregularities. Meanwhile he received a US$72 million (AU$78 million) exit bonus for his great work.
Mr Trujillo is Australia’s least admired chief executive, according to a business analysts survey by the respected Australian business magazine Business Review Weekly.
He has presided over a multi-billion dollar drop in the value of Telstra. Famously, he stated that he was "proud" of having contributed to the decline in its value.
A survey of the public by Reader’s Digest magazine in Australia found the children’s performance troupe The Wiggles were more trusted than Mr Trujillo.