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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

#181

Post by mistrial9 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #117
version_five wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, they've become more efficient at maximizing shareholder returns. 1978 to present included all sorts of financial shenanigans designed to turn a company from the old school "return on assets" model to a financial vehicle that profits on the spread between it's revenue stream and financing costs. I think it's shit too, but the job turned from running a company go making money appear, and the pay went wi…

Genuine question, have you tried hating the game and observed the response? I'm curious if your experience has been the same as mine?

yes actually - I spoke with a contractor at giant banks, at a high level of security, and with it compensation. The casual stories he told were related to beyond-belief daily animosity, racist language, whoring references and other verbal attacks and harsh emotional content. The whole thing was told in the same breath as I get this much per hour (a lot), I travelled to this place and got this hotel, I got this bonus.. in the same breath.

There is more going on with people and work and money than most people seem to acknowledge when speaking in general.

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

#182

Post by Alupis »

sgarland wrote: post #151
Alupis wrote: post #74

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 everyth…

A bad SRE team can destroy your company. Yet, even at the best places, you’re lucky if you get a small per diem when you’re on-call. I’m not saying SREs are poorly paid, but they often are keeping entire companies afloat, and their pay is nowhere near that of the C-Suite. If the entire SRE team quit / went on strike, there is a non-zero chance the next incident would utterly break the company. If the entire C-Suite q…

> A bad SRE team can destroy your company.

Ah, and the SRE team assembled themselves, hired themselves, decided what to work on, direction, technology, plans, etc all on their own?

Or is there a C-Suite running the SRE team, even if indirectly?

> If the entire C-Suite quit, uh… what exactly would happen? People would continue doing what they had already been doing?

This is beyond naïve, I'm not sure what to call it. Yes, things hum along for some duration... and then what?

C-Suite are not laborers, as you've queued into. They provide direction, guidance, goals, identify problems, etc.

Take a human being without any of that in their personal life. What becomes of them? Nothing good... it's similar for a company. The wrong leadership dooms a company before any of the line workers even notice.

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

#183

Post by abeppu »

Just to point out a demonstrated, viable, successful reality achieved under different values and assumptions, the Mondragon Corporation/cooperative produces car parts, among many other things, and has pre-agreed ratios for wages for executives relative to the lowest wages paid to workers, and this tops out at 9:1. Studies have found that worker-owned coops have a greater survival rate than conventional businesses, and that they have higher productivity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation#Wage_reg... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative#Longevity_a...

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

#184

Post by kibwen »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #158
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…

Stellantis has 270,000+ employees across 16 brands. I'm not saying their CEO does or doesn't deserve $20m in compensation but at some point you're going to run into a problem where... nobody wants to do that job for $1m/yr and they wouldn't be qualified or very good at it.

> nobody wants to do that job for $1m/yr

I invite everyone here to raise their hand if they're just as hard-pressed as me to think of any job that they wouldn't do for a million per year.

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

#185

Post by gruez »

elcritch wrote: post #73
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 Appl…

>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.

Okay but don't many other companies deal with supply chains? I guess software companies don't, but "companies that trade in physical goods" is a pretty big segment, and it stands to reason that having "a wizard of supply chain" would be useful. Doesn't this translate into an argument in favor of "leadership is leadership wherever you go"?

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

#186

Post by lowbloodsugar »

lr4444lr wrote: post #138
meindnoch wrote: post #79

"Obviously, CEOs should be the highest-paid person in an enterprise" Hold on there chap! How is this obvious?

They have the highest accountability.

Not really true. They have the most people beneath them that can take the fall for them. Finance shenanigans? CFO takes the fall. Missed targets? COO or CMO. Major hack? CTO. Etc.

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

#187

Post by Aeolun »

Alupis wrote: post #140
ajross wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone thinking a C-Suiter clocks out at 5pm and doesn't work after hours has no experience in the C-Suite That's not the standard, though. The criteria is cost above replacement, and quite frankly modern executives show up extremely mediocre on that measure. Companies flip executives all the time, and it almost never results in significant changes to revenue (and when it does, it's down as often as up). In fact th…

Flipped on it's head - 2 thoughts: 1) You cite cost of replacement - yet these companies are unable to replace their C-Suite with anyone costing less. Therefore, they can command the compensation levels they do (not to mention compensation != in pocket pay). 2) UAW employees are indeed readily replicable with little or no training on average. Offshoring is very realistic, and there is no shortage of high-school educa…

> these companies are unable to replace their C-Suite with anyone costing less

They can replace their C-suite with me. The fact they don’t want to because I’m not some rich, well-connected, historical CEO does not mean they don’t have the option.

I’d do the job for just the basic pay package.

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

#188

Post by dfiohnio »

Alupis wrote: post #74

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 everyth…

>it's a particularly unreasonable starting position and is likely demonstrating just how far apart both parties are.

Their demands are only unreasonable if they lose. This is a strike. It's fight, not a discussion. The goal is to give the company no choice but to give in. The strikers are under no obligation to be fair. They can make whatever demands they want. They don't have to give an inch if they don't want to.

>They cannot be compared, nor should they.

Comparing them is pretty simple, actually.

$ units

You have: 21 million USD / year

You want: (28 USD / hour) * (40 hours / week)

* 359.35059

/ 0.0027827977

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

#189

Post by WalterBright »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #124
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…

> As many argue, wages are only set by supply and demand. Most of the time that I see people invoke "Econ 101" concepts, they are wrong. Supply and demand does not account for the power imbalance between workers and leadership, which unions specifically attempt to address. It does not account for the class differences between workers trying to make ends meet and the board of directors who believe they deserve much hi…

> Supply and demand does not account for ...

Yes, it does, in each scenario you presented.

> We are free to change the perceived value of workers through the power of worker solidarity

It's more like using the power of government to ensure the company has no alternative to the union.

Company leaders have no actual power over the workers. They cannot force anyone to come to work. They cannot have you arrested. They cannot confiscate your property. They cannot beat you. They cannot prevent you from accepting a job at another company. They cannot prevent you from leaving. They cannot extort, libel, slander, blackmail, or threaten you. They cannot put a hit on you.

All they can do is offer you money in exchange for your labor. That's it.

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

#190

Post by astrange »

WalterBright wrote: post #189
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As many argue, wages are only set by supply and demand. Most of the time that I see people invoke "Econ 101" concepts, they are wrong. Supply and demand does not account for the power imbalance between workers and leadership, which unions specifically attempt to address. It does not account for the class differences between workers trying to make ends meet and the board of directors who believe they deserve much hi…

> Supply and demand does not account for ... Yes, it does, in each scenario you presented. > We are free to change the perceived value of workers through the power of worker solidarity It's more like using the power of government to ensure the company has no alternative to the union. Company leaders have no actual power over the workers. They cannot force anyone to come to work. They cannot have you arrested. They ca…

> They cannot prevent you from accepting a job at another company.

They can totally do that with a non-compete clause. Just not in California.

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