Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

531–540 of 611 posts

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

#531
post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> At least 44 NBA players are set to earn more than $30 million in salary for the 2023-24 season, according to ESPN, while only 36 S&P 500 CEOs earned more than $30 million in 2022, according to the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch.

Looks like only one NBA GMs is paid over $10M.

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

#532
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they can afford to pay the CEO 100M they can afford to pay above market rate to the janitors, no?

Do you have arguments or are you just going to call someone a “doo-doo head”?

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

#533
post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If labor costs go up 40%, but only in the US factories, I don't see how that doesn't lead to more parts & assembly in Mexico, Canada, China, etc.

The corporate counter-offer is 20%. Clearly they’re fine still employing a US workforce with double digit employment cost inflation - over four years.

It's beyond wishful thinking to assume that 46% increase will not motivate Ford to seek cost savings by moving factories offshore. The motivation:action tuple in this regard has been established for decades.

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

#534
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The owners brought in a new CEO, and your company earned 1 mio more due to his decisions. The owners could've chosen a cheaper CEO, or a more expensive one, if the ceo made the company earn 1mio more, they probably made a good choice. Starting a company is easy and cheap, and anyone can be a CEO... making million(s) per month is hard.

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

#535
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…

The paradox of worker-coops is that workers capable of successfully running businesses together are also capable of running businesses independently, so why create more failure points?

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

#536

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're saying that you can't calculate how everyone in the company can share in the success of the company?

Literally used to be called profit sharing.

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

#537

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.

That would be even more expensive with every company needing its own C suite

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

#538
post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

> But why did the CEO's salary increase more than the workers?

Has it? Sources indicate that the CEO of Ford's salary has remained quite steady at $1.7 million.

Perhaps you are confusing salary with total compensation?

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

#539

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

I would have thought the owner would be the highest paid person in an enterprise.

So much for that whole capitalism thing.

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

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

in the case of the GM stock particularly, is their profit that could/should be redistributed to workers (they had $10b in profit last year): yes

in the case of the GM stock particularly, are shareholders/investors reaping profits and benefit? go look up the GM stock, it's flat/down over 5 years

Post reply on HN