Labor activists are hoping that a newly implemented provision ofthe Dodd-Frank Act will lead to a national reckoning over the wagegap between corporate executives and rank-and-file workers.

Although Dodd-Frank was passed in 2010, this is the first yearthat companies will have to comply by a provision of the law thatrequires publicly traded corporations to disclose how much moretheir CEO makes than the median employee.

In addition to potentially embarrassing companies that reportgargantuan wage gaps, advocates for disclosure say that paytransparency will embolden employees to demand higher wages. It'sabout time, they argue, considering how wages have lagged behindeconomic growth in recent years.

“Most companies would say their employees are their biggestassets—so why are investors left in the dark about such basicfactors, like what they pay employees?” Brandon Rees, deputydirector of the AFL-CIO's investment office, tells the Wall StreetJournal.

Related: CEOs make more than employees… a lotmore

If nothing else, the disclosures have provided some interestingcomparisons between companies.

So far, the largest reported pay ratio between CEO and medianemployee comes from Marathon Petroleum Company. The $19.7 millionCEO Gary Heminger made last year amounts to 935 times more than themedian employee's salary: $21,034.

Marathon was quick to note in a subsequent filing that aboutthree-quarters of its 44,000 employees work in gas stations. Manyof them are part-time workers. The median pay for employees whodon't work in its convenience stores is $126,000. They make only156 times less than Heminger.

By comparison, Kraft Foods came off as relatively egalitarian.Its CEO made $4.1 million last year, or 91 times what its medianemployee made: $46,000.

Meanwhile, the CEO of Kellogg, a food company that issignificantly smaller, made far more: $7.6 million. Its medianemployee also made less: $40,000.

Experts stress caution in interpreting the numbers. There arelikely multiple ways to calculate the earnings of the “median”employee. Some companies are reporting based just on salary, whileothers are taking into account stock options and other types ofcompensation that employees receive.

As is often the case, companies will justify multi-milliondollar compensation for executives by pointing to the company'sstrong performance under their leadership. Indeed, Honeywelldescribed the $16.75 million its CEO earned last year as a responseto a particularly profitable year, including a 35 percent increasein the value of the company's stock.

Hamilton Nolan, a writer for the liberal news website SplinterNews, said that reasoning has to apply to employees outside of theC-Suite.

“The company owes its great performance to you, the workers,right?” writes Nolan. “That's what they say in all their internalemails. But how much profit sharing are you getting? Whatpercentage of stock price growth is accruing to you, the averageworkers, as bonuses or pay increases?”

From: BenefitsPro