'Say on pay' bills may be more cudgel than reality

Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has proposed writing the concept, known as "say on pay," into law. Republican Sen. John McCain wants to encourage companies to give shareholders a say but without legislating the idea.

The McCain approach is similar to what President Bush has done--jawboning corporate America over extravagant pay packages but opposing "say on pay" legislation.

Both candidates recognize the public dismay over lavish CEO pay, which often soars even when performance measures such as share price and earnings do not. Executive pay rings a strong populist tone on Capitol Hill and the campaign trail, especially when the economy is stumbling and stocks are falling.

"It becomes a way of making the income-inequality argument and the corporate-greed argument," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an expert on political communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

In March, the head of Countrywide Financial Corp. and the former heads of Merrill Lynch & Co. and Citigroup Inc. were called in for a public shaming before a House committee for pocketing hundreds of millions while the subprime mortgage crisis hammered their companies with losses.

Weeks later, while campaigning, McCain told a crowd: "Americans are also right to be offended when the extravagant salaries and severance deals of CEOs--in some cases, the very same CEOs who helped to bring on these market troubles--bear no relation to the success of the company or the wishes of shareholders."

Obama has also taken a tough stance, talking about how the average CEO in the United States earned 262 times the pay of the average worker in 2005. "Put another way, a CEO earned more in one workday than an average worker earned in a year," he has said.

"Say on pay" is gaining traction in this year's shareholder meetings. At more than 90 companies, investors and public pension funds that control more than $1 trillion in shares have filed proposals calling for a nonbinding vote for shareholders on CEO pay, according to corporate-governance tracker Walden Asset Management.

So far this proxy season, those resolutions have won majority votes at eight companies: Apple Inc., Alaska Air Group Inc., Ingersoll-Rand Co., Lexmark International Group Inc., PG&E Corp. (parent of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.), Motorola Inc., South Financial Group Inc. and Tech Data Corp.