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Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

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Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#71

Post by candiddevmike »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #47
econperplexed wrote: post #8

> From 1978 to 2021, CEO pay grew by 1,460%, adjusted for inflation, versus just 18.1% for the typical worker. Why has the supply of CEOs not kept up with the demand for them? Surely, with the improvement in education and in increase in MBA programs, there must be far more CEOs today than in 1978. Why has the ratio of CEOs to Companies fallen by 14x for their wages to rise this much? /s As many argue, wages are only…

Not all jobs have quantitative measures for impact. The more a job is decoupled from a measurable value, the more likely that job is to be bid up to "as much as the company can afford." I've seen this in my career, the closer I get to "SRE" or "platform engineer" the more decoupled my salary has become from my actual measurable value. I'd articulate the thinking as, roughly: We know this role is important. We know th…

SREs aren't on the board of directors setting the pay for other SREs who are on their board of directors though.

The elite/ownership/"capitalism winner" class are playing on an entirely different level with their power and influence. Don't kid yourself into drawing comparisons with your situation and miniscule in comparison compensation. It's always heads they win, tails you lose.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#72

Post by pratheekrebala »

gretch wrote: post #55
econperplexed wrote: post #8

> From 1978 to 2021, CEO pay grew by 1,460%, adjusted for inflation, versus just 18.1% for the typical worker. Why has the supply of CEOs not kept up with the demand for them? Surely, with the improvement in education and in increase in MBA programs, there must be far more CEOs today than in 1978. Why has the ratio of CEOs to Companies fallen by 14x for their wages to rise this much? /s As many argue, wages are only…

I support the workers' decision and negotiating on labor rates is the basis of our economic system. Get what you deserve. That said, the CEO pay is easily explainable: > Profits at the struck auto companies increased 92% from 2013 to 2022, totaling $250 billion, according to EPI > CEO pay at the Big Three has grown 40% in the last decade, according to EPI If you're the CEO of a company and you increased profits by 92…

The workers also contributed to that 92% increase in profit.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#73

Post by elcritch »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #31

I've heard a counter-argument to this before and I'm curious to get other's take on it. Basically, the story goes that when an individual rises into a significant leadership position at a large enough company that the economic calculations become different. There's still an element of domain expertise, but, for the most part, leadership is leadership wherever you go. This implies that a leader could (potentially) mov…

Though this argument falls apart with evidence that CEOs of big firms do need to deeply understand their companies domain. It may work to a degree, but doesn’t seem to coincide with the most valuable companies.

It’s why when Intel was floundering a few years back they got rid of CEO and brought on a CEO with deep engineering expertise.

Tim Cook is a wizard of supply chain, and in many ways that’s a large part of Apples current success, IMHO. The list goes on.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#74

Post by Alupis »

Settle in for a wild propaganda-filled fall season.

Between UAW Strike, SWG Strike, barely avoided UPS Strike, and probably a few I'm leaving out, we're going to be inundated with half truths, misdirection, selective statistics and even the occasional outright lie.

UAW opening demand isn't just a 40% pay hike - but also a four day workweek (when combined is ~70% increase in pay). Nobody expects for UAW to get everything they demand (that's not how negotiations work of course) but still, it's a particularly unreasonable starting position and is likely demonstrating just how far apart both parties are.

It's become a sort of meme to bag on C-Suite salaries - with a lot of folks fundamentally believing C-Suiters don't earn their pay or at the very least don't earn the extreme pay gap between them an your average line worker.

Anyone thinking a C-Suiter clocks out at 5pm and doesn't work after hours has no experience in the C-Suite (or even upper management for the matter). There isn't really a such thing as "off hours" for these folks on average. Correspondingly, decisions made by your C-Suite can earn a company huge returns, or doom the company and all of it's employees and stake holders.

Comparing C-Suite compensation, pay scale, growth rate and disparity from line workers is disingenuous at best. They cannot be compared, nor should they.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#75

Post by dymk »

71a54xd wrote: post #37

This kind of logic doesn't help anyone - yes, CEO pay is insane but its that way because of how much risk they take ownership of and shoulder day in day out. If one line worker forgets to tie a wire-harness it's not like the entire company will end up in financial ruin... However, the CEO making serious mistakes can and has cost GM millions.

A failed CEO of a large company almost never ends up bankrupt, and they almost always remain a multi-millionaire. What exactly is the risk they're taking on?

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#76

Post by afavour »

gretch wrote: post #55
econperplexed wrote: post #8

> From 1978 to 2021, CEO pay grew by 1,460%, adjusted for inflation, versus just 18.1% for the typical worker. Why has the supply of CEOs not kept up with the demand for them? Surely, with the improvement in education and in increase in MBA programs, there must be far more CEOs today than in 1978. Why has the ratio of CEOs to Companies fallen by 14x for their wages to rise this much? /s As many argue, wages are only…

I support the workers' decision and negotiating on labor rates is the basis of our economic system. Get what you deserve. That said, the CEO pay is easily explainable: > Profits at the struck auto companies increased 92% from 2013 to 2022, totaling $250 billion, according to EPI > CEO pay at the Big Three has grown 40% in the last decade, according to EPI If you're the CEO of a company and you increased profits by 92…

> If you're the CEO of a company and you increased profits by 92%

Did you? Attributing all the success a company achieves to the CEO feels shortsighted.

Aside from anything else: if all these companies saw their profits grow by so much surely there’s an external commonality there? “The CEO did it all” would be slightly more plausible if only one company experienced that success.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#77

Post by l33t7332273 »

gretch wrote: post #55
econperplexed wrote: post #8

> From 1978 to 2021, CEO pay grew by 1,460%, adjusted for inflation, versus just 18.1% for the typical worker. Why has the supply of CEOs not kept up with the demand for them? Surely, with the improvement in education and in increase in MBA programs, there must be far more CEOs today than in 1978. Why has the ratio of CEOs to Companies fallen by 14x for their wages to rise this much? /s As many argue, wages are only…

I support the workers' decision and negotiating on labor rates is the basis of our economic system. Get what you deserve. That said, the CEO pay is easily explainable: > Profits at the struck auto companies increased 92% from 2013 to 2022, totaling $250 billion, according to EPI > CEO pay at the Big Three has grown 40% in the last decade, according to EPI If you're the CEO of a company and you increased profits by 92…

It seems erroneous to me to imply that the CEO deserves a bigger pay increase than the workers that actually increased profits by 92%

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#78

Post by vel0city »

astrange wrote: post #38
econperplexed wrote: post #8

> From 1978 to 2021, CEO pay grew by 1,460%, adjusted for inflation, versus just 18.1% for the typical worker. Why has the supply of CEOs not kept up with the demand for them? Surely, with the improvement in education and in increase in MBA programs, there must be far more CEOs today than in 1978. Why has the ratio of CEOs to Companies fallen by 14x for their wages to rise this much? /s As many argue, wages are only…

It depends how they're counting. There was an example in Money Stuff this week where a CEO got a pay package "worth $110 million". It's actually made of stock options that vest if the share price went above $150, but the expected value was $110 million so that's what was reported. …But the share price only reached $66. So in fact he was paid zero, and he quit. (Well, $1.5 million in cash.) https://www.wsj.com/busines…

> paid zero

> paid $1.5 million in cash

These are two wildly different things.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#80

Post by kortilla »

throw0101b wrote: post #41
kortilla wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no academic training to be a good CEO. They are not easily replaceable. If they were, board members wouldn’t bother offering such high pay. Shareholders don’t appreciate wasting money.

> There is no training to be a good CEO. They are not easily replaceable. If Steve Jobs—who first created and then basically rescued Apple and started it on the path to where it is today—can be 'replaced' then any other leader can be replaced. Similarly there are plenty of CEOs that are paid oodles of money that were or are absolute garbage: see Boeing for the last 15+ years as Exhibit A.

He was replaced, but not with someone as good. Apple has done well under Tim Cook, but there is an obvious lack of innovative vision since Steve’s passing.
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