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Issue No. 166 | 14 February 2003 |
A Call To Arms
Interview: Agenda 2003 Peace: The Colour Purple Industrial: Long, Hot Summer Solidarity: Workers Against War Security: Howard And The Hoodlums International: Industrial Warfare History: Unions and the Vietnam War Review: Eight Miles to Mowtown Poetry: Return To Sender Satire: CIA Recruits New Intake of Future Enemies
The Cuffe Link – Taxpayers Cough Up Carr: Secret Lib Plan to Slash Public Sector Thanks a Million: Cole’s Lawyers Clean-up Gnomes Fess Up – Unionism Best For All Ribs and Rumps Something for Government to Chew On Workers Online Scoops Global Prize Let’s Get Real! 2nd Australasian Organising Conference Guard Knocked Out in Villawood Escape
The Soapbox Postcard The Locker Room Politics
War Talk A Tale of Two Malls Talk Back Tom On The Beach
Labor Council of NSW |
News The Cuffe Link – Taxpayers Cough Up
The ACTU is stepping up its push for the removal of tax deductibility for corporations who pay their executives more than $1 million per year or reach multimillion termination payments in the wake of Cuffe’s golden handshake furore. The ACTU proposal, handed to a Senate Economics Committee last month, has been slammed by the conservative press because it would cost corporations more to make multi-million payments. ACTU Secretary Greg Combet says the changes are needed to stop ordinary taxpayers from subsidising excessive corporate payments and to provide a financial incentive for companies to rein in remuneration packages. Sources told Workers Online that in the Cuff case, the Commonwealth Bank's tax bill would be cut by about $10 million - 30 per cent of the profit the bank has been forgone. Under the ACTU plan, the company would not be able to discount the million-dollar payouts from its bottom line, meaning the taxpayer would not be subsidising the exit package. News of the Cuffe payout has outraged workers, customers and investors. It was announced the same day that the bank, which has chopped 17,000 Aussies off its payroll and closed branches, announced a big fall in profits. It follows the controversial $4.65 million bonus Commonwealth Bank paid to chief executive David Murray last year. Nationally, the average income of CEO's leapt from 67 times to 89 times the Federal Minimum Wage in the last 12 months. The Finance Sector Union's Sharron Caddie says the payout would have paid the wages of all the 1,000 workers that the Commonwealth Bank laid off in the past 12 months. "Its disgraceful that the thousand CBA staff sacked last year could still be in work, and dozens of branches could have remained open, if sums like Cuffe's payout and the bonus paid to David Murray were reinvested in the Bank," she says.
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