Posted on 01/21/2015 6:16:37 AM PST by Citizen Zed
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.
"Here we are a Fortune 50 company and we're about to put these people into poverty and I just didn't think it was fair," he said during a "Squawk Box" interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Aetna first made the announcement last week during the JPMorgan Health Care Conference. The wage and benefit hikes will impact about 5,700 workers who were making between $13 and $14 per hour.
Many of those workers were single mothers who had to rely on food stamps and Medicaid because they could not afford Aetna's health care plans, Bertolini said.
(Excerpt) Read more at mob.cnbc.com ...
Shouldn't they make the pay-raise retroactive to make up for their selfishness?
Minimum wage employees are not victims of anything except themselves. If you don't like your place in life (and why is it the example trotted out is a 15 year employee of McDonalds!) get a real job.
And if you can't? Your employer is providing a job to someone who would otherwise be unemployable.
Very good point you bring up and worthy of further discussion / action by our FR community.
There are 880,000 healthcare data suppliers (HC insurers, providers, pharmacies, etc) that take every bit of your information and sell it to anyone within the HC realm.
No one is tracking or regulating this.
You have no say whatsoever.
The fishbowl has gotten a bit smaller, no?
The Only independent org addressing this is
http://patientprivacyrights.org/
Its founded by a doctor who was shocked to find that HIPAA applied to her, but not commercial healthcare data sharing entities.
See her TEDtalk on the subject in the link provided.
Why is that amount any less valid than $10, $14, or $20?
And some people wonder why the robot business is booming it’s amazing what some people think they are worth.
I am so tired of the never ending supply of pity and money I am supposed to hand over to these women.
He didn't say it was a smart business decision. He said to pay less was unfair.
He said not to do so was unfair, which is as loaded a statement as exists.
It is Aetna's money not a govt handout. To me as a US citizen it is a little weird the compensation of CEO's compared to bottom rung workers. Not that any govt action should be taken but it does breed contempt for an otherwise good capitalist system.
It’s nice that he wants to share his wealth. His property tax last year on his home in West Hartford was $22,659.
My current employer just completed a "market wage" study and new hires (which now require MBA's) will start at slightly higher rate than my current wage built over 30 years of service. Happy I am not but at least there is the option of taking my services elsewhere. Companies can set their own wage policy, employees have the option of staying or leaving.
Yeah, I get that my beef, however, is with the constant attempt to iconize single mothers.
And he is living it up over in Davos in his luxury penthouse suite. There are 1700 private jets over in Davos right now. You can be sure one of them is from Aetna’s fleet. These guys don’t fly USAirways.
Pay your people whatever the hell you want. As long as the shareholders are cool with it, I don’t see it being an issue. That being said, don’t go around being all self-righteous telling everyone else what they should pay their workers.
“Because he didn’t say what you said.
He said not to do so was unfair, which is as loaded a statement as exists.”
Eye of the beholder I guess.
I don't think it's any more valid or any less. It is what Aetna is willing to pay. One might expect that they would attract a better quality of job candidate paying $16 than $10 or $14. And that they think that they can get or retain all the good employees they need without paying $20. It's a reflection of their employment model.
He raised their wages from $13-$14 per hour to $16.
So, they were already making more than minimum wage.
Which?
I don’t think they received the $16 yet. I believe the board would have to approve it. I bet the CEO will exercise his stock options to buy after his statements push the price down. He’ll sell the stock after the price goes up due to employee layoffs and benefit reductions. Then he’ll give the proceeds to Biden.
A-HA!
Someone who understands!
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