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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

#491

Post by somsak2 »

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?

great question! profit margins have indeed been rising significantly over the past few decades, from around 5% to 12% just since the mid-90s -- https://www.yardeni.com/pub/sp500margin.pdf

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

#492

Post by hinkley »

Alupis wrote: post #98
hinkley wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also been suggested that Congressional salaries be a fixed multiple of minimum wage, and for similar reasons. Honestly I think that would probably fix things a lot faster.

> suggested that Congressional salaries be a fixed multiple of minimum wage That's insane no matter how you look at it. Minimum wage is paid by individuals, private businesses and their owners. Congressional pay is paid for with your money - an effective infinite of your money, or they'll just poof new money out of nowhere to continue to pay themselves. Correlating the two is plain wrong.

Congress is responsible for raising the minimum wage. That’s the connection.

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

#493

Post by ken47 »

nemo44x wrote: post #380
ken47 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the CEO's in question are not even remotely comparable to Lebron James's stature in basketball.

Then your understanding is misinformed I’m sorry to report. CEOs are generally top level business people and most business people can’t play at their level. There are exceptions but the system cycles poor performers out much like the NBA does to high draft picks that have lower than replacement value. Businesses compete against each other and the CEO orchestrates the strategy and is accountable for the the execution…

The problem is that so many people are "CEO" nowadays. Anyone can become a CEO tomorrow by registering a corporation for a few thousand dollars or less. The businesses that produce great value, and may reflect well on their CEO's abilities, are in the minority.

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

#494

Post by boppo1 »

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.

>C-suite career people

How do these people get to be C-suite career people? Seems like you basically have to be born into modern nobility. I've asked people who work with them about this and they make these vague claims about 'ultra drive & competitiveness' but I don't buy that those things are magically statistically concentrated in Ivy League grads.

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

#495

Post by doublespanner »

lolinder wrote: post #136
Alupis wrote: post #74

Settle in for a wild propaganda-filled fall season. Between UAW Strike, SWG Strike, barely avoided UPS Strike, and probably a few I'm leaving out, we're going to be inundated with half truths, misdirection, selective statistics and even the occasional outright lie. UAW opening demand isn't just a 40% pay hike - but also a four day workweek (when combined is ~70% increase in pay). Nobody expects for UAW to get everyth…

> Comparing C-Suite compensation, pay scale, growth rate and disparity from line workers is disingenuous at best. They cannot be compared, nor should they. For everything besides growth rate I can see arguing that they can't be compared—I don't agree, but I can understand where you're coming from—but why should a CEO's salary go up dramatically faster as a percentage than line workers'? Is the CEO somehow working 40%…

Because the CEO is managing a company that is either 40% bigger or 40% more profitable. The worker is likely doing similar work...

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

#496

Post by mortureb »

AmVess wrote: post #280
astrange wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US market car manufacturing isn't in India/China because of NAFTA. And because cars are big and heavy, of course.

Buick Enclave and Lincoln Nautilus are two Chinese made cars in the US. Expect US car manufacturers to have the bulk of their product lines to be made and designed in China before too long.

Some Jaguars and Land Rovers are made in India and are available in the US.

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

#497

Post by jmye »

anigbrowl wrote: post #216
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.

Maybe if a company gets so big that finding people to manage it becomes disproportionately expensive, it's time to break it up.

Why is that in anyone’s best interest?

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

#498

Post by grecy »

jmye wrote: post #468
grecy wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why did the CEO's salary increase more than the workers? To keep the equation in check, surely they need to increase at the same rate

Why? No individual assembly line worker has any particular value - so if the aggregate increases then the equation, in your example, is “in check”, whatever that means. Alternatively, if assembly workers were difficult to effectively replace, they would get paid more. Simply doing some unit of work neither makes that unit of work valuable, nor does it make the person doing it valuable.

> nor does it make the person doing it valuable

That is a very sad way to look at human life, and I hope these strikes now and into the future prove that not to be true.

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

#499

Post by davorak »

charcircuit wrote: post #392
davorak wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only time I see arguments against high CEO pay (speaking generally), it's from people that know absolutely nothing about what a CEO does or how exceptionally difficult it is to operate a very big company. The most common argument I see is that the ceo pay has increased relative to the common or average employee salary. I doubt being a ceo has become that much more difficult over the same time period though.

People are not paid based off difficulty.

I did not make the claim that it was. I was only responding to:

> The only time I see arguments against high CEO pay (speaking generally), it's from people that know absolutely nothing about what a CEO does or how exceptionally difficult it is to operate a very big company.

Which links ceo pay via complaints to "how exceptionally difficult" it is to do the job of a ceo. The implication is if people understood how hard the ceo job is that they would not complain about the pay. That implication does not make sense if there is no link between difficulty and pay.

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

#500

Post by dfiohnio »

Alupis wrote: post #140
ajross wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone thinking a C-Suiter clocks out at 5pm and doesn't work after hours has no experience in the C-Suite That's not the standard, though. The criteria is cost above replacement, and quite frankly modern executives show up extremely mediocre on that measure. Companies flip executives all the time, and it almost never results in significant changes to revenue (and when it does, it's down as often as up). In fact th…

Flipped on it's head - 2 thoughts: 1) You cite cost of replacement - yet these companies are unable to replace their C-Suite with anyone costing less. Therefore, they can command the compensation levels they do (not to mention compensation != in pocket pay). 2) UAW employees are indeed readily replicable with little or no training on average. Offshoring is very realistic, and there is no shortage of high-school educa…

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