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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

#381

Post by lolinder »

Alupis wrote: post #284
lolinder wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I somehow don't see UAW arguing for a reduction in pay. The four day work week is more often than not accompanied by a related pay increase so the total pay per week remains the same as a five day work week. The benefits are supposedly a better rested and production workforce, which has yet to be demonstrated in the type of setting UAW oversees.

You're inventing terms that are not discussed in any source I can find. The sources I see show a 4-day work week and a 40% pay increase. If you can find evidence of a second pay increase we can talk, otherwise I'll assume that the 40% is meant to be that increase.

You led out your initial comment warning about propaganda—it might be worth considering if you fell for propaganda on the other side.

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

#382

Post by lz400 »

lostlogin wrote: post #250

> “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…

In banks and financial companies it's relatively common that some rock star trader or quant that has an exceptionally good year might make more than the CEO.

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

#383

Post by sgarland »

Alupis wrote: post #238
sgarland wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

> No - hiring managers and directors decided it was necessary. Where did the hiring managers come from? Poofed out of nowhere? How did they know what to hire? Just made up their own direction? This would be like if a McDonald's line cook could just decide the company no longer will offer the Big Mac because they don't like making it. This line of thinking is so typical for a developer. You even reference Scrum like t…

> Where did the hiring managers come from? Poofed out of nowhere?

Now you're talking about founders, which is !=== CEO. I have respect for founders - they built something. If the founder happens to still be the CEO, then same. If instead it's just yet another suit, then no, they had nothing to do with the hiring manager.

> How did they know what to hire? Just made up their own direction?

I mean, yeah? Do you think that everyone under the CEO is a helpless infant, incapable of independent thought?

> You even reference Scrum like that means anything in the areas we're discussing.

Because they stem from the same line of thinking - that workers must be managed, lest they wander aimlessly and destroy the company.

> This line of thinking is so typical for a developer.

Two fun facts: I'm not a dev (SRE/DBRE), and tech is not where I gained this line of thinking. I spent a decade as a nuclear reactor operator on a fast-attack submarine. Submariners in general are taught to be independent, and fully capable of taking over someone else's duties when necessary. Nuclear-trained personnel, even more so, and those who actually operate the reactor (me) yet more.

Could a submarine leave port without the Captain? Ideally not (and the Navy would never let it happen if they had a choice), but we are absolutely trained to do so. Hurricane prep during in-port periods mostly consists of making sure the duty section are the good ones, because if it hits, whoever is on the boat is going to start her up _real fast_, take her out, and submerge. A $2 billion warship is entrusted to a skeleton crew of personnel because we know what we're doing.

It's worth noting that Google - who invented SRE - heavily borrowed from the Nuclear Navy [0].

[0]: https://sre.google/sre-book/lessons-learned/

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

#384

Post by pm90 »

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

> A stressed-out employee who is at work is going to outperform a well-rested employee who isn't present

Citation needed.

There is no hard evidence for this belief. In fact, and especially for creative jobs, employees that are well rested and happy will contribute more than stressed out plebe barely getting by.

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

#385

Post by billti »

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.

Steve Jobs is practically an example of WHY top CEOs get paid so much. Apple was basically in its death throes when he came back. A few years later they had the iPod. A few years after that the iPhone. When he died in 2011 they were well on their way to being the worlds most valuable publicly listed company.

I do think a lot of CEOs are way overpaid. That said, if a couple hundred million package means the difference between a company folding and firing everyone, or being a multi-billion dollar business with thousands of employees, the math works out.

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

#386

Post by bagels »

pests wrote: post #321
bagels wrote: post #279

People get really fixated on CEO pay. Its only of symbolic importance. Google says: 167,000 GM employees Mary Barra salary: $29M Distribute that salary across the whole workforce: $174 per employee They should really be talking about it in terms of inflation or profit margin. GM profit for 2022 was $21B

I always see people show this equation and it never made sense to me. No one is saying the CEO is taking money the employees would have otherwise earned. When you divide it out like that of course its a pittance per employee. The statement is about the relative scale of the CEO pay to one employee. I don't care about the difference applied to all employees. An absurd parody I always imagine: John is 7ft tall. His gro…

It frequently doesn't matter how much the CEO makes. It's not why the other employees aren't making more money. It's just a distraction. It boils down to "it's not fair". If what is important is the ratio between CEO pay and employee pay, then the board can cut CEO pay, and call it a day. That doesn't improve employee pay.

If the employees really only care about that ratio, then they should accept that outcome from their strike. That's not why they are on strike, they also want to be paid more, just like the CEO.

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

#387

Post by ummonk »

WalterBright wrote: post #227
aaomidi wrote: 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!!

Nobody is complaining about founder pay. The complaint is about publicly traded companies being subjected to elite capture by parasitical execs.

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

#388

Post by notatoad »

pests wrote: post #321
bagels wrote: post #279

People get really fixated on CEO pay. Its only of symbolic importance. Google says: 167,000 GM employees Mary Barra salary: $29M Distribute that salary across the whole workforce: $174 per employee They should really be talking about it in terms of inflation or profit margin. GM profit for 2022 was $21B

I always see people show this equation and it never made sense to me. No one is saying the CEO is taking money the employees would have otherwise earned. When you divide it out like that of course its a pittance per employee. The statement is about the relative scale of the CEO pay to one employee. I don't care about the difference applied to all employees. An absurd parody I always imagine: John is 7ft tall. His gro…

yes, you're right, if you distributed john's height across his 6 friends, they'd all still be normal height, and nothing would really change for them, except that john would no longer be abnormally tall. you've taken a situation where there's something noteworthy, and made that noteworthiness disappear.

the same logic applies to CEO pay. you can either pay the CEO a lot, or you can pay everybody else an amount so slightly different that it's unnoticeable. there's value in paying a CEO a lot, or you can not pay them a lot, and not pay anybody else any more either. surely you can see how there might be value in offering a high salary for a role that can have a big impact on the company, and how simply not doing that and essentially erasing that money instead would be a bad decision?

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

#389

Post by burnerburnson »

grecy wrote: post #376
meindnoch wrote: post #79

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

For a fun thought experiment: If the CEO go on strike and don't come to work for a month, how many cars will not be built, and how money will the company lose? If the union factory workers go on strike and don't come to work for a month, how many cars will not be built, and how much money will the company lose? Therefore, who is actually more important to the earnings and success of the company?

That's not an interesting thought experiment at all. The workers in aggregate are clearly more valuable than the CEO alone. That's why their cumulative salary is way higher than the CEO's.

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

#390

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

gus_massa wrote: post #342
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…

That's almost a x100 increase. If you ignore Pelé, the top soccer player had a similar increase in the same period. https://www.expensivity.com/soccer-salary-inflation/ Compared with the median income, they went from 10x in 1979 to 1300x in 2020. Why has the supply of Messis not kept up with the demand for them?

Thanks, I think this is the best answer and really gets at what is going on.

"Star" pay has exploded across all industries (entertainment, sports, and yes, business) and it's not hard to see why. Technology has vastly grown the size of markets, and the "winner take all/most" dynamics of these star-driven occupations means the winners are able to take an outsize chunk of the revenue.

I think there are some other things going on with CEO pay (CEO salaries are basically set by other CEOs, for example), but the parent comment absolutely gets it wrong when they say "the supply of potential CEOs has increased". In the competitive market for CEOs (as well as actors, musicians, sports stars, etc.), people are not interchangeable commodities. Someone who is only slightly better can be responsible for their corporation completely "winning" in some industry, and thus companies are willing to pay top dollar for this chance at getting the brass ring.

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