"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?
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
#512Just 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.
• 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.
Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
"cooperatives don't have to treat everyone exactly the same. You can have different "classes" of members. some ideas about how to offer "founder incentives" in workers cooperatives." From a recent HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37304911
If you want to come up with a different word sure, I would just call whatever you defined there as traditional a corporation. But worker cooperatives is known as "one worker, one vote" and anarcho syndicalists like Richard Wolff wouldn't consider that a worker cooperative anymore.
Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew
#514I've heard a counter-argument to this before and I'm curious to get other's take on it. Basically, the story goes that when an individual rises into a significant leadership position at a large enough company that the economic calculations become different. There's still an element of domain expertise, but, for the most part, leadership is leadership wherever you go. This implies that a leader could (potentially) mov…
So what if I don't get my contract renewed if I have $50 Million, that's more than most people make in their entire lives. See you at the beach!
Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew
#515Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#517Earlier 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.
Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
"cooperatives don't have to treat everyone exactly the same. You can have different "classes" of members. some ideas about how to offer "founder incentives" in workers cooperatives." From a recent HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37304911
If you want to come up with a different word sure, I would just call whatever you defined there as traditional a corporation. But worker cooperatives is known as "one worker, one vote" and anarcho syndicalists like Richard Wolff wouldn't consider that a worker cooperative anymore.
But also, Kasmir seems to be faulting co-op members for some lack of ideological purity, and frankly, for failing to live up to the aspirations that others have built around them, which aren't their responsibility.
> Many academics and social justice activists alike — maintain that co-ops promise a more democratic and just form of capitalism and even sow the seeds of socialism within capitalist society.
> Co-op members voted to pursue an international strategy to open these firms, and, thus, to employ low-wage laborers. Hence, we are confronted with a complicated permutation of a familiar state of affairs whereby the privilege of one strata of workers depends upon the exploitation of another.
> Compared with workers in the standard firm, co-op members were less involved in and showed less solidarity with the Basque labor movement, which at the time was part of an active leftist coalition for socialism and independence for the Basque country.
But the point of a co-op is not to further the goals of academics and activists, nor is it the responsibility of any co-op to maintain allegiance to whatever movements or institutions that the author admires. If Richard Wolff wants people to vote in the workplace, and wants those votes to mean something, doesn't that power and autonomy also necessarily mean they have the power to disagree with his views and pursue their own success and flourishing? And its success should be measured by the degree to which co-op members benefit, not by the extent that they're an ideological tool for outsiders.
Yes, one might have wanted Mondragon co-ops to create other worker-run co-ops in other countries, rather than subsidiaries. But it's hard to see how that would have actually worked. Frankly, starting factories in China by talking to workers about how important democracy is could have gotten people hurt. And these firms do still need to be able to compete and succeed in a global marketplace in which most of their peers are operating from a purely capitalist playbook. If you draw your ultra-orthodox definition of what a co-op too narrowly, you risk adopting a definition which excludes successful firms of any significant scale.
Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew
#519I've heard a counter-argument to this before and I'm curious to get other's take on it. Basically, the story goes that when an individual rises into a significant leadership position at a large enough company that the economic calculations become different. There's still an element of domain expertise, but, for the most part, leadership is leadership wherever you go. This implies that a leader could (potentially) mov…
I think the whole thing falls apart when you get to the point of a CEO making so much money, regardless of their performance, that they can just retire after a single year. So what if I don't get my contract renewed if I have $50 Million, that's more than most people make in their entire lives. See you at the beach!
Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the whole thing falls apart when you get to the point of a CEO making so much money, regardless of their performance, that they can just retire after a single year. So what if I don't get my contract renewed if I have $50 Million, that's more than most people make in their entire lives. See you at the beach!
A counter consideration I’ve heard is that they have to pay more to keep them off the beach! If the board thinks Turskarama is the best leader for the org, then they have to pay enough to keep you off the beach. Which could be absurd amounts of money.
At some point sure maybe I can work for a couple of years and I will earn enough to buy myself a super yacht... but I don't want a super yacht as much as I want to not work.
It's very funny to me that people make the argument against raising welfare that there will be no incentive to find work, yet somehow they think this same argument can't apply to the super rich who can retire with a lot of money instead of struggling along on a subsistence income.