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I do the accounting for about 25 companies that average between $10 and $15 million a year. None of the CEOs make more than $100,000. Most of them employ 35 to 50 employees who make almost as much as the owners. Talking to other accountants, that's been their experience also. When people talk about corporations they think of the multi-billion dollar firms and don't realize that 99% of the corporations in this country do NOT fall anywhere near them, but that doesn't stop them. That's all they think about.

Most of these corporations are headed by people who mortgage their homes in order to meet payrolls. THESE are the people that the unions are putting out of business. THESE are the people who will lose everything while the union stiffs are quibbling about jobs being replaced. THESE are the people who's lives are wrapped up in those shipping cartons that are stacking up on the pier and waiting on the ships out in the bay.

Oh, it's great to picture the big rich corporate executive who pays $6,000 for a shower curtain, but ignore the fact that maybe 10,000 business are in the supply line who DON'T live like that. I'm sick of everyone painting corporate America like a bunch of theives. I've sat up all night with some of these guys trying to figure out how they can keep guys on the payroll. I've watched them sell their accumulated assets, the work of a lifetime, in order to make sure their people can feed their kids.

Unions single out the one or two greedy execs and try to portray all executives like that and it isn't true, it isn't real, and it's unfair and ungrateful.

BTW, I'm currently working with one executive who hasn't received a paycheck all year but has managed not to lay off a single person. None of them know that he's going without a paycheck and it sickens me when I hear them talk about him in the breakroom.

I just did a check on salary.com for median (half make more, half make less) compensation of CEOs in three west coast port cities, these figures represent base pay, plus bonus and benefits but do not include stock options:

Seattle

$950,397

San Francisco

$1,040,040

San Diego

$936,472