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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

#311

> 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…

I have bad news for you. Those workers who demand 40% wage increases and 32 hour work weeks will be "easily replaced" by auto factories in the South who have right to work laws.

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

#312
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And that's easy to test. Remove everyone except the CEO, and see how things work out.

Bad argument. I could just as easily say "remove everyone except the ICs and see how things work out."

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

#313

> 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.

But apparently people will do it for $2 - $5 million. In the most recent fiscal years, Stellantis’ revenue was about double Honda’s.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/how-much-money-does-ceo-of-hond...

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

#314

> 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…

During the same time, the US automakers worldwide market share shrunk from 30% to about 10%.

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

#315
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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% YOU, the CEO, didn't single-handedly increase profits by even a single percentage point. One employee out of 1 million, take your millionth of a cut of the profits, that's still $150K.

the CEO has quite a bit more influence over the company financials than ICs do, however good they are.

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

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leadership is set by shareholders. There is still accountability. Public unions seem more undesirable. There we have the gov negotiating with itself with no external accountability, unlike your example.

> Leadership is set by shareholders. Funny thing, I own a vast number of stocks through various means, either directly or via ETFs, and yet never in my life have I had an opportunity to weigh in on the salaries of anyone in the companies I hold equity in. > Public unions seem more undesirable. There we have the gov negotiating with itself with no external accountability, unlike your example. The government is negotia…

> Funny thing, I own a vast number of stocks through various means, either directly or via ETFs, and yet never in my life have I had an opportunity to weigh in on the salaries of anyone in the companies I hold equity in.

Because obviously what you call "vast" is actually a minuscule percentage of the company.

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

#317

> “Obviously, CEOs should be the highest-paid person in an enterprise, but then the question is exactly just how much higher than everyone else,” Josh Bivens, chief economist at EPI, told NPR. Are there any examples where this isn’t true? I know someone who works as an engineer cleaning up nuclear waste. The workers who do the job he engineers are paid more than him. He is ok with that but did pass the comment that i…

The football coach is often the highest paid employee at the university. I wouldn’t be surprised if many rockstar doctors made more than some of their hospital CEOs.

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

#318

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…

My econ 101 talked about the difference between commodity and illiquid markets which explains the difference between worker and CEO pay. The CEOs are coming from a restricted group of insiders and can't be replaced because of their relationships which make them unique. Workers in the sectors most often unionized have few distinguishing characteristics from the perspective of the company and are thrown around by the s…

> There is no indication anywhere that supply and demand is wrong about the job market.

If supply and demand worked as theorized in the labor market then there would necessarily be a loss of employment when the minimum wage is raised, but that is not always the case [1].

Some studies find effects and some don't, which is a good indication that the labor market is more complicated than Econ 101 principles.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Empirical_studies

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

#319
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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% YOU, the CEO, didn't single-handedly increase profits by even a single percentage point. One employee out of 1 million, take your millionth of a cut of the profits, that's still $150K.

Good leaders are able to make other people more profitable. If someone was able to make 500k people more profitable that is worth a lot.

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

#320
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The people who decide where money gets allocated are allocating most of it to themselves? If this was done in a government it would be called extreme corruption.

>The people who decide where money gets allocated are allocating most of it to themselves

The difference is that the people who decide to pay the CEO so much are the ones who made the money (the company owners), it's their money to spend how they see fit. In the government it's not people spending their own money, they're spending other people's money that they obtained through the threat of jail for those who don't pay it.

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