The average salary at Florida Power & Light next year will be $95,600 and, with fringe benefits added, that rises to $113,000, the company's compensation director Kathleen Slattery told utility regulators Wednesday as FPL resumed hearings on its rate case. By 2011, the salary average for its 11,157 employees will rise to $96,400 and, with fringe benefits, it will equal $117,000.
Beyond the rank and file, FPL executives are paid based on a series of performance rewards, she said. In 2008, FPL paid 12 executives more than $1 million each, including three officers who made $3 million or more and Lewis Hay, the chief of FPL's parent company, FPL Group, made more than $10 million, $7.5 million of which came from FPL.
"We are comparing these wages and salaries to those of other utilites in our industry,'' Slattery told the commission, in response to a series of questions from an attorney for Florida's largest industrial users. "These waes are very reasonable and prudent."
Jon Moyle, who represents the Florida Industrial Power Users Group, asked if she knew the average wage in Florida. She did not.
Was Slattery aware that "the trend in Florida is not to increase wages?'' Moyle asked.
"I would not agree.,'' Slattery responded. "Based on the data I gathered from the Florida employers who participated in the World at Work survey…the utility industry does not have high unemployment…total employees is slightly higher than in 2008, an increase of just under 1 percent…For our industry there is still competition for competitive wages.''
Slattery said that because of the economic downturn, however, in the fall of 2008 the company cut back on its incentive budgets. She acknowledged, however, that in 2009, FPL executives are entitled to a 25 percent bonus upon successful completion of the rate case. She said she did not know details.
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