Amazon’s Jeff Bezos defends company after brutal exposé
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has claimed he doesn’t “recognise” the company described in a damning report by the New York Times. In the article, Amazon is accused of pushing employees to the limit by employing cruel management practices and showing little empathy for health and family problems. “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk,” said one ex-employee, quoted in the article. Allegations include managers reportedly forced to rate all employees and fire the lowest-scoring workers to satisfy performance quotas, and company managers expecting instant responses to any emails from employees, even if they were sent after midnight. Following the allegations, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote to staff claiming the article didn’t “describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with”. He added that anyone working for such a “soulless, dystopian” company would be “crazy to stay”. (Wired)
Chief executives earn ‘183 times more than workers’
FTSE 100 chief executives (CEO) earn on average 183 times more than a full-time worker. A report by the High Pay Centre, a think tank that monitors income distribution, shows that top UK bosses earned on average £4.964 million in 2014. That compares to £27,195 median pay for a full-time employee in 2014. The High Pay Centre said the executive pay packages went “far beyond what is sensible… to inspire top executives.” The pay gap did not increase dramatically between 2014 and 2013, when chief executives earned 182 times the average worker’s pay, but the High Pay Centre points out that it is much bigger than in 2010, when CEOs earned 160 times more. This comes in spite of legislation introduced in the UK to increase transparency on executive salaries in large companies, and a number of large shareholder rebellions against pay packets at companies including Burberry, Intertek and HSBC. (BBC; Financial Times*)
Social Mobility
Study: Racial wealth gap persists despite degree
A new report raises troubling questions about the ability of a college education to narrow the racial and ethnic wealth gap in the US. “The long-term trend is shockingly clear,” said William R. Emmons, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and one of the authors of the report. “White and Asian college grads do much better than their counterparts without college, while college-grad Hispanics and blacks do much worse proportionately.” From 1992 to 2013, the median net worth of blacks who finished college dropped nearly 56 percent (adjusted for inflation). By comparison, the median net worth of whites with college degrees rose about 86 percent over the same period. Asian graduates did even better, gaining nearly 90 percent. (NY Times*)
Corporate Reputation
Royal Dutch Shell boss says ‘personal journey’ led to Arctic drilling decision
The chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, Ben van Beurden, says he embarked on a “personal journey” before making the controversial decision to start drilling for oil in the Arctic. He said he was aware of the risks of drilling in a “fragile” environment, but claimed the reservoir Shell was exploring would be “relatively easy” from a technical perspective. Shell’s safety vessel Fennica arrived off the coast of Alaska last week, clearing the way for the Anglo-Dutch firm to begin drilling deep enough to hit oil. “There is no such thing as a risk-free world, so I cannot eliminate the risk altogether, but I can bring back to something that I think is appropriate and manageable.” But former BP boss Lord Browne warned the search for hydrocarbons in the frigid seas would prove highly expensive and could end up harming the long-term reputation of the company. (IB Times)
Waste
Helped by floating robots, UN-backed research ship scours Indian Ocean for plastic waste
The United Nations is supporting a project aiming to chart the impact of plastic waste in the Indian Ocean, underscoring the risk of dramatic upheavals in marine ecosystems even in one of the world’s least-known and least-visited environments. An estimated 5 trillion pieces of plastic currently float in the world’s oceans, up from none in 1950, posing a question about their potential impact on a food supply chain that stretches from plankton – which have been filmed eating plastic pellets – up through shellfish, salmon, tuna and eventually humans, not to mention whales. With these troubling facts in mind, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is supporting the efforts of the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research, which is plying the waves of the southern Indian Ocean with robotic sensors, trawling for trash. (Eco-Business)
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