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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

#201

Post by lolinder »

Minor49er wrote: post #139
aaomidi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 day work week has been successful in most places. As a world we should move towards it. Other benefit: less environmental impact, more time for people to improve themselves and their mental health, etc.

When picking candidates for employment, why would an employer choose someone who is willing to work five days over someone willing to only work four? A stressed-out employee who is at work is going to outperform a well-rested employee who isn't present

Because their union insists that all their members get a 4-day work week or you don't get any workers at all. This is what unions are for: standing up for workers' rights when the employer would otherwise be incentivized to pursue the short-term gains from exploitation.

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

#203

Post by nicoburns »

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…

Having control of money is power. A kind of power that everyone needs, and many workers (who are typically poorer than company leaders) don’t have secure access to.

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

#204

Post by kccqzy »

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.

These people with the highest accountability do not hesitate to blame lowly software engineers when it suits them.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/8/9481651/volkswagen-congre...

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

#205

Post by astrange »

kangaroozach wrote: post #155
highwaylights wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To paint the above in starker terms: Worker pay is set by the leadership, leadership pay is set by the leadership.

100% this. Leadership gets to decide how insanely hooked up they will be. Same as congress. Remember when they carved themselves out their own Health Insurance requirements? Same thing.

That hasn't been true for ~13 years now, Congress's healthcare comes from ACA exchanges.

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

#206

Post by sgarland »

Alupis wrote: post #182
sgarland wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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

And you think the CEO did this? No - hiring managers and directors decided it was necessary.

> This is beyond naïve

Not at all. Who decides what the product needs? Product Managers, or sometimes Engineers directly. “Setting company direction” is vague at best, and can easily be replaced by people in more direct contact with customers.

And in any case, you made my point by agreeing things would hum along for some time. Executives are not critical to a company. Workers are. Without workers, profit immediately goes to $0 (modulo automated factories / SaaS, but as mentioned once something breaks, you again need people).

You seem to believe that workers are incapable of autonomy, of seeing needs and meeting them, etc. This is why Scrum exists, because people like you don’t think people like me can be trusted to do what’s necessary to keep things running.

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

#207

Post by CraigRo »

kibwen wrote: post #184
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody who is qualified to do it... I've worked with executives at that level, and let's face it-- most of us don't have the single-minded devotion to do it, nor the experience to manage thousands of people.

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

#208

Post by vondur »

I totally agree that CEO pay is out of control for the most part, but I doubt the companies can really afford to give such a huge raise to thousands of employees. I think in the 1950's US, the average CEO's salary was "only" around 5-10x that of the average workers rates. This meant while CEO's were wealthy, they weren't Uber-wealthy like they are today with 100x salaries vs. average worker pay.

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

#209

Post by lolinder »

Alupis wrote: post #125
aaomidi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 day work week has been successful in most places. As a world we should move towards it. Other benefit: less environmental impact, more time for people to improve themselves and their mental health, etc.

Successful or not is not the point. If met with the 40% pay increase it's another huge pay raise. There is no reality where line workers screwing in the same 3 door bolts all day long are getting what amounts to an effective ~70% pay increase. Additionally, the 4 day work week is yet unproven in an industrial setting, such as are UAW member's jobs.

A four day work week is only another pay increase if you're talking about a salaried worker. The kind of worker represented by UAW is not generally overtime-except, so they don't get paid for hours they don't work.

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

#210

Post by meindnoch »

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.

But isn't compensation proportional to the cost of replacing someone?

I can imagine a bunch of roles that are more costly to replace than "someone with accountability".

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