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

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351–360 of 611 posts

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

#351
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just ask for what you think you deserve and don't work if you don't get it. This is the most wildly privileged take possible on the issue.

I agree. Someone in the leadership tier can generally get by longer without desperately needing to work; their house is often paid off, they get dividends from shares, etc. Down in the blue collar ranks, many of those people are scrounging to stay on top of rent, or pay a mortgage, or getting hit by rising food costs. Many workers aren't in a position to change jobs on a whim.

It's probably a bit easier if you can collect unemployment for refusing to work, like I hear California is doing.

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

#352

How about this compromise: cut the CEO's pay by 40% and give an 80% raise to the workers.

her pay was $29m 40% is $11.6m

there’s 160,000 employees

$72.50 a year per employee

a $1/hr raise for a full time employee is $2,080/year

they makes $17/hr and UPS makes $21/hr on the low end part time wise

lots of employees want at least $8k/yr raise ($4/hr on the low)

a bit different from $72.50

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is so obviously the right answer, I can’t believe its not upvoted more. To be clear, I stand with the union on the principal of their argument. However, the principals of economics itself, much like gravity, do not care about the nobility of your cause. It seems to me that what the union is asking for is that the corporation act more like a benevolent force than one that is restricted by market pressures. Of cou…

You've got it backwards. The principals of economics accurately describe a shitty situation created by corporations. They do not determine how the corporations must act; economics models exchanges of wealth. When the corporations control the wealth they simply model what the corporations are doing.

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

#354
post #277

I have to wonder. What percent of Tesla's success is attributable to not having legacy union baggage. Unions are the tech debt of the manufacturing world. It starts with a good idea, but if you let it fester, then it quickly becomes more of a drag than a productive addition to your organization.

Unions don’t serve the company. They serve the workers. The real irony here is that Henry Ford jumpstarted the middle class by increasing pay to match increased productivity. That new middle class then bought his cars. A company that doesn’t serve workers and thus society has no right to exist.

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

#355
post #183

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, an…

Mondragon is not a worker cooperative. They have a three-tiered worked system[0] with clear hierarchical structures and differences in voting power. The temporary worker tier (largest) having no voting power whatsoever.

[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290978631_The_Mondr...

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

#356

> “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…

I’d imagine Linus Sebastian (of YouTube Linus Tech Tips fame) is taking home more money than the recently appointed CEO of the Linus Media Group. But that’s also a weird situation because he basically hired the CEO to free himself up to do the parts of the job he likes.

He said someone offered to buy the company for $60M cash I think it was? Which is astounding.

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

#357
post #81
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO an equation like that would be fine as long as you made it possible for CEOs of larger companies to make more money than CEOs of small and medium sized companies. There’s a job market for C-Suite employees (whether we care to admit it or not). At a certain point you won’t get qualified candidates if you can’t reward them enough, same as engineers or any other role. The answer for how much CEOs should be paid is t…

Well that's simple, larger companies that want to pay their CEO more can pay their lowest paid employees more.

That's moronic. A good CEO at a fortune 500 company could have a $100M revenue impact. That same CEO could never be worth $100M to a local restaurant. The idea that the bigger company can't offer more to attract a better CEO just because both businesses employ janitors that make market rate is mind-numbingly stupid.

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

#358
post #184

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.

I wouldn't take that CEO position. Seriously. I would make a terrible manager, let alone a CEO of a massive company responsible for the livelihoods of thousands of people. I might be able to keep something floating for a year, if I leaned heavily enough on other experienced people around me, and even then only if I could trust them. I've been places where the people just under the top layers were royally screwing things up and the top layers weren't competent enough to see it.

Do I wish I could make that sort of money and run a world changing company? Sure do. But I'm self aware enough to know how badly that would likely go for both me and the people I'd be responsible to.

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

#359
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but in general the CEO doesn’t really do much to the stock price. If the general market is up, it’s going up. If the market is down, it’s going down. How many companies really break that relationship in their market sector? So tldr, ceo pay is based on the economic cycle rather than how the company does.

> but in general the CEO doesn’t really do much to the stock price Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, etc. > ceo pay is based on the economic cycle rather than how the company does You can always start your own corporation, name yourself CEO (all you gotta do is file some paperwork and pay an annual fee) and rake in the dough for doing nothing!!

Those are founders but this is an external hire at a later stage not really the same.

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

#360
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that there is no US state where a company can "prevent you from accepting a job at another company." In some states, and in some circumstances, they may be able to prevent you from accepting a job at a competitive company.

Clearly a competitive company counts as "another company".

Yes - but not every other company - so they have not prevented you from working at another company...
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