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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

#401

Post by lovich »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #374
no_wizard wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a superficial argument that leads to the point that you want it to, rather than determination of the factors such as: Was there an entire marketing department that was needed for this to be successful? Why aren't we quantifying that? Why aren't we quantifying the new QA processes to make sure the packaging is correct? Why aren't we factoring in workers downstream contributing to the success by being able to p…

You cannot calculate stuff like this... you just can't. If they earn so much more, should they pay contractors more too? Does your plumber ask how much do you earn before he fixes your toilet? What about other supplies? Should they pay more for cocoa? For sugar? Do you pay more for bread in your local store than someone who earns minimal wage? You do none of that... you try to get the lowest price when you're paying…

>You cannot calculate stuff like this... you just can't.

Then why assign the cause of the increase to the CEO?

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

#402

Post by SequoiaHope »

edgyquant wrote: post #369
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why global worker solidarity is so important.

It’s also unrealistic. Different workers in different nations have different cultures and compete with each other for a scarce supply of buyers.

> Different workers in different nations have different cultures and compete with each other for a scarce supply of buyers.

This is a description of the status quo of capitalist competition, but is not a fact of nature. We can arrange our economies to work in cooperation with one another, rather than in competition. Competition is used specifically to depress all worker wages for the benefit of the ownership class, and we do not have to accept that at face value.

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

#403

Post by ummonk »

carlosjobim wrote: post #327
r3trohack3r wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all jobs have quantitative measures for impact. The more a job is decoupled from a measurable value, the more likely that job is to be bid up to "as much as the company can afford." I've seen this in my career, the closer I get to "SRE" or "platform engineer" the more decoupled my salary has become from my actual measurable value. I'd articulate the thinking as, roughly: We know this role is important. We know th…

> We know this role is important. We know that having a bad SRE team (or CEO or platform team) is expensive, it could cost us the 100% of the business. And we don't know how to measure the value a good one provides. Therefore we are willing to spend as much as we can afford to make sure we get a good one. And who are "we" in this train-of-thought? If it's shareholders, that's where the root of any problem lies. If sh…

Yup the shareholder is an ETF today. The people voting on behalf of shareholders aren’t the people benefiting from the success of the company.

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

#404

Post by smileysteve »

gretch wrote: post #55
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…

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…

gross growth should be less important than relative growth.

From 2013 to 2023 GM was beat in innovation by both Tesla (Model s,X , Y, and 3) and Ford (aluminum f150 and electric f150, mustang mach e) and has only recently been producing vehicles that look like their 2030 lineup - on the competitor's charging network technologies.

GM was even particularly slow on ice adoption of things like independent rear suspension. Or, the Corvette - where they basically pulled a Nissan and bought the competitor's engine.

Slow to innovate, early to fail (Volt/bolt), purchase from the competition is not what we should define as a good CEO.

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

#405

Post by thechao »

kortilla wrote: post #93
thechao wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've become 14.6x more efficient at ... what? Increasing their pay? C'mon.

Price is based on how difficult it is to find someone that won’t drive a massive company awry, not based on them becoming better.

Like Carly Fiorina? The pay for CEOs is set by the board, and the board of most large companies is made up of CEO's from other large companies. It's the private equivalent of plutocracy.

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

#406

Post by amrocha »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #332
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #304

This is great. Add this to SAG-AFTRA, Waffle House workers and Starbucks walkouts and we have real movement toward a general strike If both Wal-Mart and Amazon drivers strike we might actually have a shot a taking a bite out of capital finally.

serious question: say everyone you described gets a 20% raise what do you think will happen to the cost of goods? what companies do you think are operating with enough margin that they can just afford a 20% rise in their payroll costs?

Serious question: if every company was working with razor thin margins, and every worker made make minimum wage while investors reap profits from speculation, would that be good?

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

#407

Post by marcus_holmes »

wins32767 wrote: post #197
olliej wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone pointed out "1.5 million in cash" for not doing the job you were hired for is .. not zero. I'm fairly sure I could achieve the same results for considerably less. Moreover making compensation dependent on stock price movement encourages corruption and fraud - look at the numerous Enrons and other financial claims. All of which left the majority of those responsible enriched while destroying the lives of ot…

> I'm fairly sure I could achieve the same results for considerably less. I'm highly skeptical of that. Not driving the company value to zero is worth a significant amount of money; anyone who has worked under a bad executive or CEO can tell the difference between one that didn't accomplish aggressive goals and one that's objectively bad. If you have a bunch of executive experience, maybe you'd be able to replicate t…

> If you have a bunch of executive experience, maybe you'd be able to replicate that CEO's performance, but absent that it's more likely you'd cause more harm than just not making the goal.

I doubt this is true. Organisations have inertia, and getting one to change direction or do something different is remarkably difficult. (source: I have been hired as a CEO to change the direction of an organisation. It was difficult).

I strongly suspect that an average person being put into the CEO role would do fine as long as the organisation was basically OK. They'd make mistakes, sure, but everyone makes mistakes. The organisation has ways of limiting the damage of mistakes.

The hard bit about being CEO is taking full responsibility for your decisions with no feedback. You can deal with this in a wide variety of ways; arrogance, narcissism, authoritarianism, or humility, honesty, and teamwork. We tend to see the first three because those kinds of personalities cope well with this kind of difficulty. But that doesn't mean this is the best way to deal with it.

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

#408

Post by kolbe »

FireBeyond wrote: post #282
adventured wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Use the same framework to explain CEO pay. Sure. It's the same framework that explains the pay of Lebron James. The NBA became a massively popular global game during the era of fast growth globalization, in which billions of consumers entered into the active global economy. Now you've got like 50 players earning $30m or more per year in the NBA. To play a game in just the US market. ~450 active players earning arou…

> The top 450 NBA players... The top 450? There's only 450 players. 30 teams, 15 players on the roster. > earn more in salary every year than the CEOs of the S&P 500. No, they don't. There are 30 teams, with a salary cap of $136M, i.e. $4.08B. I'm looking at the top CEO salaries and I'm already at $2.6B and I'm only at number 20 .

> I'm looking at the top CEO salaries and I'm already at $2.6B and I'm only at number 20.

I appreciate how many of you immediately jump to make such egregiously bad displays of business logic in response to someone asserting that you cannot even comprehend the job of a top CEO.

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

#409

Post by amrocha »

nateburke wrote: post #350
cj wrote: 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…

> There’s a job market for C-Suite employees And it can sometimes be VERY illiquid. Headhunters help to provide this liquidity and get paid for it. Sometimes C-suite career people can go years without a job. Not every CEO or CFO makes fortune 500 comp and many people falsely assume low compensation volatility as e.g. a "career CFO". It can be extremely stressful, especially with family/dependents.

No. There is no financial stress in a CEOs life. The CEO that can't afford private yacht lessons for their daughter is not the same as the single mom working 2 jobs to feed her children. Stop drawing a false equivalency.

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

#410

Post by mlsu »

pc_edwin wrote: post #306

I remember getting downvoted then flagged for making a reasonable argument against a bunch of employees from Tesla unionising. While its not exactly a vindication, I feel super vindicated right now and I'm not gonna be reasonable this time. These companies have no way out, they are going to die! All these people will lose their livelihood and worse their options to monetise their skillset/experience will be next to z…

Some executives are as you say. In general, those companies which are lead by executives like that are leaders and produce high quality and innovative products that people love.

But many execs are not. They work just as obsessively as the first type, but only to increase their own power inside of the organization, at the expense of the organization's cohesion, trust, productivity, and quality. They live in a bubble, totally disconnected from the organization's purpose. They make strategic mistakes over and over again. They fail to truly understand why even a single dollar of revenue happens; instead they take it as a given that the money is coming in and only think of ways their unit can siphon off more of it, at the expense of all the others.

If just one of these type 2's enters your organization, you can typically get by, as long as you recognize them quickly enough. If even a small handful enter your C-suite, they will metastasize, cause your type 1's to leave, and put your org on a death spiral.

Many execs are of the second type. You can tell: if you use a product or service, and it sucks, that's probably what's going on at the top.

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