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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

#521
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but would phrase it differently: C-level stress is often self-created – gotta have a bigger mansion, longer yacht, hotter trophy wife, etc. than my frat buddies - whereas many of their employees’ stress is externally-driven - hoping the car doesn’t break and cost you a job, worrying that the cost and time of a return to office mandate will take a big chunk of what’s left of your margin after inflation, etc. I…

I'm married to an exec and I can tell you both that (a) The stress is very real, and (b) It's not self-created, it arises due to the responsibility and magnitude of decision-making coupled with having to deal with other execs that are promoted beyond their ability yet somehow still have absolute faith in their ability to lead and execute despite their limited experience, worldview, or both, and (c) It seems to be abo…

"About the same" is not the same. I'm sure it's a stressful job, but it's also self imposed. If you're getting paid a CEO salary, you can quit and live off investments after a single year of doing it.

It is in no way comparable to people that need to work to live.

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

#522

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?

The costs of goods will increase regardless of labor cost as they have already. The issue lies in the contradiction between relatively stagnant wages and the rising cost of goods/housing/etc which naturally develops into labor organizing.

A better question to ask is what will happen when a larger portion of the profit that these workers created now flows back into their communities?

Workers spend their money at family run business, and small to medium size businesses in their community and contribute to the local economy. The economic implications of this effort are not just beneficial for the 150,000 UAW workers but their communities and local economies as well.

In contrast the board members who are reaping those profits are not spending money in those communities. Even if they theoretically lived in the same communities and frequented the same businesses they would not buy anywhere close to the same quantity of goods and services that the 150,000 uaw workers would with those same profits.

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

#523
post #376

"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?

Depends on what executive actions only the CEO can perform. I've seen this happen in a microcosm, where the managing director just refused to do things, and due to tasks only he had authority to do, contracts went unsigned.

Obviously large corporation will be more robust, and have things like attorney of power that - so that there's no single point of failure. But, these things happen.

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

#524

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…

Yes the CEO should make more, but where do you get off that a single individual can possibly do 300-400x more work than another individual. It is sheer absurdity of an opinion to hold. In a civilized society I would say maxing out the top paid employee of a company to 20-30x of the average of the salaries of the bottom half of all salaries in the company is what should be done. Anything more than that creates a syste…

Also Akida Toyoda made $6.9m last year, and Toyota is larger than any of the US companies by a wide margin in every metric, while bringing in more net income. How do these US CEO's calculate their worth as 5x as much for smaller less profitable companies? It's avarice clear as day.

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

#525

Just wondering, but are any of the American car companies doing well besides Tesla? Every year they seem more irrelevant, even Texans will buy Japanese pickup trucks these days. I just don’t see them rich enough to pay their CEO or workers 40% raises, and that increase is just going to be temporary as their business become less viable and layoffs or insolvency follows.

Best-selling cars in the US are • Ford F-series(F-150 being the most popular car in the US) • Chevy Silverado • RAM Pickup • Tesla Model Y • Toyota Rav4 • Honda CRV • Toyota Camry • GMC Sierra • Nissan Rogue • Jeep Grand Cherokee So 6 out of 10 are American.

Okay but that's in a protected market with high entry barriers and import tariffs for foreign competitors.

What's the list globally?

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

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's more like using the power of government to ensure the company has no alternative to the union. Unions absolutely do not need the government to exist. It is only through government attempts to control and curtail unions that the government has involved itself in unions. See for example the Taft-Hartley act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act

> Unions absolutely do not need the government to exist. That's absolutely correct. But in America, the unions use the government to tilt the balance heavily in their favor.

What makes you say that? The Taft Hartley act I linked to significantly weakened union power in this country. In other countries like Germany unions have much more power and representation.

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

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea why this change occurred? I know it’s probably multifaceted, but my first thought was that increasing inflation since the 70s has meant that there is an incentive to have as much debt as possible, the hope being that it will be inflated away

With the complete end of the gold standard in the 1970s, the government/fed's been free to create as much USD as it wants. The benefit of newly created money goes to those who spend it first (it's essentially a wealth transfer from those who get it last to those who get it first), and it's the banking/financial system that generally gets first dibs on this newly created money. This means there's a continuous, persist…

This is such a simple and clear explanation of the financialisation of society I just wanted to keep a reference

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

#528
post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quick estimation tells me that average ratio amongst the big three is 1:336[0].

Put differently: 336 workers’ per annum amounts to the pay the CEO gets. There are three CEOs in this case so that’s about 1,000 workers to equal their pay.

If I recall correctly there are about 12,000 workers striking, so their cumulative salary is about 12x that of the cumulative CEOs.

I don’t know why, but that doesn’t feel “way higher” to me. I guess I just expected something along the lines of 100x for some reason.

Also makes me wonder how this scales when you look at C-Suite as a whole v. workers.

0: https://fortune.com/2023/09/17/uaw-strike-highlights-carmake...

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

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these things are good for workers, their quality of life, and the quality of their work, and American workers deserve those things.

Defined benefit plans?? The only defined benefit plan left is social security , which is fast going into insolvency in exactly a decade, and where it will automatically be cut 25% once that happens!

“contrary to a common misunderstanding. In 2035, if nothing else is done, the program could pay 80 percent of scheduled benefits, mostly out of workers’ ongoing contributions, a figure that would slip to 74 percent in 2096”

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/social-security-is-not-bankrupt

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

#530

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

It's obviously wrong. NBA teams are a good counter-example. Nobody talks about the team's president/CEO/etc when prognosticating which team will be the best.

Do NBA CEOs get paid less than the highest paid players? I would expect them to get paid more.
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