Analysis by the AFL-CIO union found that chief executive officers of the top 500 companies took home $12.4m on average while they exported jobs overseas

The US’s top 500 chief executive officers earned 340 times the average worker’s wage last year, taking home $12.4m on average, according to a new report.

The analysis by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of US unions, found that the pay of executives leading the S&P 500 index of top companies actually dipped last year. In 2014 the same group earned 373 times more than their workers, earning on average $13.5m.

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The marginal drop in pay comes despite some eye-watering payouts for the three highest-paid CEOs – Masimo Corporation’s Joe Kiani, Timothy Walbert of Horizon Pharma and Gamco Investors’ Mario Gabelli – who took home nearly $300m between them, according to the AFL-CIO.

The average production worker, who does not hold a supervisory role, earned about $36,900 a year in 2015. That number, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, encompasses workers across the US economy, not just the S&P 500 companies. Adjusted for inflation, that wage has remained stagnant for about 50 years.

“The income inequality that exists in this country is a disgrace. We must stop Wall Street CEOs from continuing to profit on the backs of working people,” the AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka, said. The AFL-CIO represents about 12.5 million working Americans.

The survey comes as wage disparity and US manufacturing jobs have risen to the top of the political agenda. The Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic rival Bernie Sanders have lambasted US industry and trade policy for outsourcing blue-collar jobs to cheaper manufacturing bases in Mexico and China.

“Last month,” Trumka said, “when I stood with the Carrier workers in Indianapolis whose jobs making home heating furnaces are being shipped to northern Mexico, I saw firsthand how corporate greed destroys communities. Carrier is a subsidiary of United Technologies and its CEO, Gregory Hayes, made nearly $10.8m in 2015. It’s shameful that a CEO can make that type of money and still destroy the livelihood of the hard-working people who make the company profitable.”

Another company that the report focused on is Mondelez International, which makes Nabisco products like Oreos, Chips Ahoy and Ritz Crackers. It, too, has announced plans to move 600 jobs from Illinois to Mexico.

“They quit me. I didn’t quit them. It used to be that places like Nabisco were proud places to work, but now workers like me are tossed to the curb despite years of dedication,” said Mary Willis, who was one of nearly 300 people laid off by Mondelez in March.

Michael Smith, another former Mondelez worker and father of four, said that he earned $25.70 an hour before being laid off. At 59 years old, Smith said he is not sure he can reinvent himself in today’s job market and has daily bouts of depression. His old wages provided his family with a comfortable living.

“We weren’t anywhere near Irene Rosenfeld’s level, but we enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle,” he said. Mondelez’s CEO, Irene Rosenfeld, made $19.7m in 2015, equivalent to $9,471.15 an hour, about 368 times more an hour than Smith.

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After Mondelez announced that it was shifting parts of its Oreos production to Mexico, Trump chanted “No more Oreos! No more Oreos!” at one of his rallies. Trump has also spoken out against Carrier’s decision to shut down two of its Indiana plants and move production to Mexico. The AFL-CIO, which represents Carrier workers who are about to be laid off, organized a rally at one of the locations in support of Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate. Both he and his rival, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, have also spoken out against Mondelez.



At the moment, labor unions like the AFL-CIO and other workers’ organizations are the only ones attempting to track the pay ratio of corporate executives and average American workers.

However, in August last year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission finalized a pay-ratio rule that would require publicly traded companies to disclose pay ratios of their CEOs and the median pay of their workforce. The rule was part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act.

US-listed companies are expected to start reporting their pay ratio by 2017.

This report was corrected to reflect that the three highest paid CEOs took home combined $300m, not $3bn.