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Aetna raised employees' wages to a base of $16 per hour because paying them less was not fair, Mark Bertolini, CEO and chairman of Aetna told CNBC on Wednesday.

Fair is paying the employee commensurate with the values of his/her production.

Paying more than the value of those efforts is harmful to the company and unsustainable unless other employees are paid less than the value of their work.

So paying an employee more than the value of their work is unfair to other workers or corporate suicide.

So the board of directors or the stockholders should demand of Mr. Bertolini an explanation of this pay raise for the company’s low wage workers. Were these employees paid less than their worth in the past (unlikely) or are they being paid more than their worth now (more likely).

Regardless it is not the typical responsibility of a CEO to determine the wages of the lowest level employees. The man is stepping out of his role which is something very dangerous for a manager to do.