In short, there's a limit to most people's tolerance for inequality in pay, especially in the face of it being mostly decoupled from performance. The question is whether there that matters, and what the consequence is.
"The ugly truth is that your boss is probably overpaid--and it's for your benefit, not his. Why? It might be because he isn't being paid for the work he does but, rather, to inspire you. In other words, we work our socks off in underpaying jobs in the hope that one day we'll win the rat race and become overpaid fat cats ourselves. Economists call this 'tournament theory.'"
http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/20/executive-compensation-tour...
On the other hand, in my previous job the boss paid us As much as he could afford to ($17/hr, not bad for retail) and in his life was by no means rich at all. He drives a beat up car and wears second hand clothing. We all respected him so much and felt much more motivated to do well, and also felt like we were an actual part of his company and took it personally how well the company was doing. In my position now, and my colleagues agree, we feel totally cut off from the company and have no interest in how well a collection does (I work in fashion.)
Basically I feel like this theory only works if the CEO is overpaid and the workers are fairly paid. But in the end I think feeling part of a team is better for the company than feeling like you are in a tournament.
I would also like to add that 90k is hardly embarrassingly low. That is quite a comfortable wage that many people will never see in their life.
link: http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/09/30/wealth-and-an-american-...
A tech startup analogy is: a company issues an IPO or gets acquired.
You know it's a fairly rare event, and it may not happen to you, but you believe it's possible, so you're motivated to keep going.
BUT the article says he is paid less than the ''pilots''. Flying a plane is not necessarily a dangerous job, but is has risk, requires skill (with reasonable initial investment in training etc.) and comes with a ''personal and immediate responsibility for a number of lives''.
So when you balance the job descriptions; who should get paid more?
When the airline does not make the expected revenue, by numbers, they end up having to borrow money and pay out a sum that ends up being over 100%.
Collective bargaining rules.
Hence the ever bankrupt airline industry.
Forest Gump made so much of a loss the writer refused to do a sequel since he didn't want them to lose money
But that's nothing compared to universal selling the DVD rights to spiderman for $1 to universal so that Stan lee didn't get a cut.
not JAL's main competitor - ANA.
As other other people have already said, it may be the case that this was actually the boss's value to the company (given its low profits and eventual bankruptcy). This would make it a lot better, but it's not how the motive comes across in the article.
If it's the former, the airline should hire a new CEO.
If it's the latter, it's a petty pretense aimed at petty people. And a self-respecting "ordinary" person who has a sense of the value of her time would consider it a slap in her face if her boss doesn't see fit to apply the same sorts of standards to his time.