r/news • u/justacoupleqs • 3d ago
Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase—the same rate their CEOs' pay grew in recent years
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/15/striking-uaw-auto-workers-want-a-40percent-pay-increase-how-much-they-make-now.html304
u/letokayo 3d ago
UAW says, " OVER THE LAST FOUR YEARS:
Profits at Ford, GM and Stellantis have gone up 65% CEO pay at the companies has gone up 40% Big Three spending on stock buybacks is up 1,500% Average new car prices are up 34% Inflation is up 20% Autoworker wages are up just 6%"
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u/maralagosinkhole 2d ago
The big 3 auto makers are getting government money to build more cars in America. Not there's anything wrong with that, but the executives should not be the only ones reaping the rewards.
Employees were asked to take a pay cut during the pandemic. They complied. Wages for workers haven't even recovered from that, but the executives who also took a pay cut during that downturn are making MUCH more.
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u/Secret_Car 3d ago
The big 3 auto manufacturers have made over $250 Billion (with a B) in profits over the past decade. They can afford to pay the workers this increase without it affecting their business.
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u/NinjaLanternShark 3d ago edited 3d ago
FYI because math, the 40% raise they want equates to around $9.6 billion
per year.over four years.gradually increasing over four years to ultimately reach 40%, or $9.6 billion, after which it becomes an annual cost.I think.
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3d ago edited 3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/thefonztm 3d ago
And 3 sets of lay offs in the past 2 years. I was in product development. They got rid of our CAD teams ans set the work to Tier1 suppliers/Mexico. I got re-assigned as a quality engineer with zero experience and basically zero training. Same as my new boss. Somehow survived the second round of lay offs. Didn't survive the third.
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u/RoboProletariat 3d ago
blows me away when a company commits to brain drain on purpose.
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u/Zediac 3d ago
Yeah, the brain drain is going to cripple long term productivity and thus profits and maybe even market share, but next quarter's numbers will be amazing.
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u/asillynert 3d ago
Yup this quarters great and they will cut back demand more and more of workers. Sell of equipment and factorys. And then when its close to collapse they will go get "bailout" and begin the "looting" all over again.
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u/ICBanMI 3d ago edited 3d ago
Manufacturing goes in cycles. This is likely not the first time the auto makers have done this, and it is likely not the last time.
Every time what happens is they move the manufacturing to Mexico, some high double digit number of parts are scrape (60-70% or higher), they get operation #1 on the list wrong and yet do 5-10 more operations, start seeing 40-100 edits from the designer/drafter with the checker rejecting every one to a drawing for simple parts in CAD (changing something simple on a shim will get rejected 40-100+ times by the US side, while Mexico doesn't follow notes, and then throws some random change back over the wall), and a competitor will steal all their workers at different times by offering 50 cents more per hour. This will go on for a few years, great stock, product tanks, customers complain, and then the business will move some of the manufacturing back to the states to fix some of the issues all while having trouble replacing the engineers/machinist they previously employed.
Till the next high level person comes in, decides to outsource, and it repeats.
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u/ryapeter 3d ago
The part I love is blaming China on stealing the knowledge. What stopping the Chinese company to pay the fired worker.
The company have no loyalty to the worker yet expect them to keep quiet stay unemployed.
The knowledge is not stolen.
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u/xinorez1 3d ago
China negotiated with Nixon. We will manufacture your stuff but your manufacturers have to share their knowledge. Nixon agreed. China isn't stealing, they are taking what they have negotiated.
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u/SamuelDoctor 3d ago
Short term profits are the driving force of public companies.
When faceless shareholders run America's largest companies, the result is always a race to the bottom.
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u/gorgewall 3d ago
Look at what repeatedly happens in the tech industry and is still going on post-COVID:
Companies hire a bunch of workers because they need them
Whether or not that need dries up in the near future, the need will arise again shortly
The companies get rid of excess workers and then some
A few quarters of short-term gains later, they need the workers again
They (re)hire workers, of which the process of recruiting, training, and onboarding costs much more than the money saved by having fired workers in the first place
This would be akin to a two-car household selling one of its cars every summer because "the kids aren't in school and we won't need the extra to drive them there and back, think of what we'll save on insurance," only to buy a brand new car again at the start of the school year. Yeah, there's some minor savings, but it's completely torpedoed by the cost that follows.
This works in business because of the goofy way accounting is perceived by our (shareholders') dipshit brains: firing workers is something you actively do to save money, but hiring them is an unavoidable cost of business. Hiring is an expenditure that's not seen as a real choice, or is merely an opportunity to make more money eventually; the long-term benefit of hiring people is seen, but the long-term benefit of not firing people you will rehire anyway is forgotten for the sake of a few months of lower payroll.
And what's even dumber? Some of this is just other businesses playing follow-the-leader. Because, say, Microsoft has this brainrot where they feel the need to fire a bunch of folks they'll rehire, all these other companies--who may not even have a rationale to fire in the first place, because they didn't over-hire for some scheme that didn't plan out--look at them and say, "Well, this big name must know something we don't. The industry as a whole, clearly, is laying off people, so we ought to, too."
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u/somdude04 2d ago
I was laid off, then rehired as a subcontractor at the same company the same year, at a 40% pay bump, plus whatever overhead the subcontractor charges. Just generates a 'look, we cut headcount' stock bump, but costs more in the long run.
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u/_Fun_Employed_ 2d ago
Publicly traded companies and policies that favor “the investors” over the health of the company and its employees first were a mistake.
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u/RKRagan 2d ago
It used to be that you'd make money by selling a better product than your competitor. Profits came from good sells, reliable products. Now the investors control the profits in the form of dividends and stock buy backs by cutting workforce and development costs in order to make the company seem more valuable than it is.
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u/Dragonsandman 3d ago
These corporations and the people who run them are only ever interested in maximizing profits right away no matter the cost. As a whole they're deeply myopic morons, and the only way to get them to change their ways is to force them to change, either by regulatory pressure from the government or their own workers demanding better from them via unionization and strikes.
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u/RoboProletariat 3d ago
Something wild: despite all the economic gain the US domestic automakers brought to the country, they developed very little technology.
The seatbelt was Swedish, the airbag from Slovenia, fuel injection invented by the Swedish and implemented by Japanese and European auto makers first.
The domestic auto makers made the exact same shit in different shapes from 1960-1985. The great technology leaps were the most basic developments in capacitors and analog circuits.
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u/TheBirminghamBear 3d ago
hey got rid of our CAD teams
Just have the interns draw it up in paint, no need to waste money.
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u/ICBanMI 3d ago edited 3d ago
They just have the engineers/checkers on the US side signing off on everything, and have the people outsourced do the changes/revisions.
The problem I've found is the people outsourced to... do matter. Some will do it absolutely well and others will be trying to maximize time wasted to get paid more hours or per change. So you'll have something like a simple change to a shim that will have 40-100+ edits where the checker rejected the change, wrote notes on what to fix, somehow the outsourced person got it wrong again, and figuratively threw it back over the fence... 40-100+ times in the logs. Just repeats, on something anyone decent at CAD (CATIA, Solidworks, Siemens NX, etc) would solve in about 5 minutes and move on with life (time to spool up the program, download the file, read the notes, apply the changes, upload finished drawing/model, and notify the checker) . Get what you pay for.
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u/maowai 3d ago
Also horrible in this way with software development. Many teams are so lazy/unskilled/incompetent/uncaring that you need to tell them exactly what to do, otherwise it’ll fall short of expectations. At that point, it takes less time to do it yourself. You cannot give them problems to solve. You must tell them how to solve them, and they go through the motions of the work.
The shitty thing is that we can’t catch everything, so low quality garbage ends up slipping into the product. Don’t have time to do my full job and babysit every single detail of others’ work.
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u/ICBanMI 3d ago
I do software instead of manufacturing for a career now. Outsourced total agree. But even in house is pretty bad... People not testing their check ins. People implementing their function in the worst area-because couldn't brother to spend time thinking if it makes sense it should be there. People stomping on other people's work to save an hour or two of integration time. People commiting engineer builds they didn't brother to do a checkout on afterwards just to even verify it's still working. I can't even tell you how many times I work with someone who throw an engineering build to the customer, on machines we provided, told the customer it was all functioning, and it blew up within 10 seconds of running the program. And you'd think they'd change what they were doing after 2nd or 3rd time it happened, but they don't feel shame. They feel angry and frustration that you're asking them to do more... rather than just do it slower and correct the first time.
Buddy does UI design for websites-people making in excess $100k and they have to pull teeth to get their designers to open the website in a browser after making changes.
It is amazing anything gets done and functions.
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u/CarlMarcks 3d ago
If anyone wants to know where all the wealth is flowing. Definitely not down.
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u/PM_ME_UR_RAFFLES 3d ago
Only thing trickling down from the top is the C suite fools’ piss trickling down on the heads of average American workers
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u/Behndo-Verbabe 2d ago
Reagan’s trickle down voodoonomics was never meant to trickle down but up. It’s the foundation for today’s wealth inequality and why the middle class got destroyed. It’s amazing how so many blue collar republicans still idolize Reagan and blame the democrats for everything.
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u/besselfunctions 3d ago
Ford's profit was -$2.0 billion in 2022. They lost $7.4 on their Rivian investment. The adjusted EBIT was $10.415 billion.
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/37996/000003799623000012/f-20221231.htm
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u/Khue 3d ago
They did stock buy backs instead
For anyone who is keeping score:
Record repurchasing began in 1982 after the SEC passed a rule exempting buybacks, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed into law by former President Donald Trump also enabled corporations to freely repurchase to pay out shareholders and executives
1982... Ol' Ronny Reagan...
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u/ProfessionalLine9163 3d ago
Well it’s 40% over 4 years. Not all at once, so it won’t be that much.
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u/NinjaLanternShark 3d ago
Thanks, corrected.
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u/WastingTimeIGuess 3d ago
I think you were closer to the mark initially. They want a 40% increase reached by 4 years from now, so it would cost auto manufacturers the full amount annually in 4 years and every year after that. What it would cost next year has not been negotiated yet.
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u/Liet-Kinda 3d ago
The automakers already agreed in principle to this, they're reneging.
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u/falsewall 3d ago
Well they already got at least 20% of the increase negated by the past like 2 years of inflation
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u/Cultural-Panda8899 3d ago
Thats fine, over 10 years that’s $96B additional pay, meaning executives still have over $154B to play.
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u/PixelThis 3d ago
100% this. They are terrified of the precedent, but it's about fucking time the workers see some of the benefits of their labor.
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u/prailock 3d ago
It's not about their business surviving, it's about the working class realizing their value. They don't want to give up control.
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u/asdaaaaaaaa 3d ago
It also doesn't hurt that the worst-case scenario still would barely affect those actually running things. Even if the company just tanked tomorrow, they'd still be stupidly wealthy and able to find a new job.
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u/M0rphysLaw 3d ago
"stupidly wealthy" people don't need to "find jobs". And a lot of the wealth is tied up inthe stock price so if that craters, no more wealth. The C-level will be fine
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u/sue_me_please 3d ago
The wealthy diversify their wealth so that if a stock tanks, they'll still be wealthy.
If an auto manufacturer is bankrupted, wealthy investors might lose some value, but they will still be filthy rich.
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u/LoveThieves 3d ago
That's smart to use percentages instead of dollar amounts.
The union knows that it's sounds nice on paper when the CEO is like we'll give you a $10,000 bonus every year but in actuality, it's worse. CEO making sure every year in the long run doesn't align with percentages, the workers are getting decreasing results over time.
Eventually turning everything into a 99.99% CEO income while the workers die off into 0.01% ratio future.
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u/Neuchacho 3d ago edited 3d ago
Bonuses are a terrible thing to take for the simple reason that they can be cut at-will for any given reason and businesses know this. Put that shit into their salary or fuck all the way off.
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u/highapplepie 3d ago
Yeah I thought I heard the news say something like the strike taking more than two weeks would cost more than their pay raise demands. Did I hear that wrong?
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u/5kyl3r 3d ago
not to mention taxpayers bailed their asses out many times
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u/buckX 3d ago
Not the best example. The auto industry bailout was loans with interest that were repaid ahead of schedule. It's about as benign as bailouts get.
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u/asdaaaaaaaa 3d ago
Or, they can afford to bribe politicians to simply make sure that never happens and no regulation/policies on workers rights/pay ever comes across. Sadly, that will 'save' them a ton of money, and really is their only option left (depending on company). At a certain point a business will make all the profit it can, you simply cannot force more people to buy your stuff. After that, their only option is to claw back profits by raising prices, cutting back on labor and customer service/quality.
That's why you see these monolith businesses make extremely short-sighted and stupid decisions, because that's their only option after a certain point to "raise" profits, even if it tanks their company. Doesn't matter to the people in charge, they still get their parachute.
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u/pmmeyourfavoritejam 3d ago
A little bit of profit (after reinvesting in the business via R&D and other future-facing activities) is necessary for businesses. You have to be able to withstand a down year. I get that.
But excessive profit is nothing if not waste. If these three companies are collectively profiting $25B per year, that's value being created by the people building enough cars to sell to make that money, and they're not seeing a proportional amount of that value.
As others have pointed out, they're asking for a raise that still leaves plenty of profit on the table for these businesses.
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u/xninjagrrl 3d ago
prepare yourself for the onslaught of comments about how prices will rise if people get paid a good wage yet ignore the fact that prices rise anyways
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u/DarthBluntSaber 3d ago
Right all the people ignoring that 40% was specifically asked for by the union to call out the ceo who got a 40% payraise while the workers got nothing. 40% wasn't chosen arbitrarily. It was specially chosen to call out the hypocrisy of giving someone who already makes 20-30 MILLION a year a 40% pay increase.
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u/xninjagrrl 3d ago
I want to know exactly when and how this psyops occurred that has so many average or poor people simping for the richest people on earth. It makes zero sense.
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u/WayneKrane 3d ago
My cousin is on every government program under the sun (section 8 housing, food stamps, Medicaid, etc.) and she constantly complains about the estate tax being unfair. I’m like you will never come close to having $13+ MILLION dollars. It’s bizarre seeing so many poor people simp for the rich
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u/changrbanger 3d ago
The increase to 12.9M will sunset in 2025! Then it goes back down to 5M per person… it’s a travesty I tell yah!
Bless your cousins heart for thinking of the multi multimillionaires during these troubling times.
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u/Matrix17 3d ago
Leaded gasoline was the psyop tbh. Made people stupid on purpose
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u/tommy_b_777 3d ago
...you might be onto something. Even if it wasn't deliberate, the end result is still a gullible populace that is easily exploited...
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u/yikes_why_do_i_exist 3d ago
Encountered this topic in a really interesting lecture series on modern power structures in today's world. The rephrasing of it to be called the Death Tax really helped shove it forward and was incredibly useful tactic to exploit single-issue voter tendencies. Very fucked up and effective as it's specifically targeting group psychology rather than actual policy cons/benefits
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u/FyrelordeOmega 3d ago
It's the hope that they too will be rich, it's the biggest pyramid scheme of the mind.
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u/DarthBluntSaber 3d ago
Just look at the idiots going "well its cheaper to give ONE single MASSIVELY overpaid person $10-15 million EXTRA every year, than it is to give to pay raises to the people who are ACTUALLY working". Like yeah, of course it isn't feasible to give 1000s of people a 40% payraise. But that's the point, if you can't give your workers a raise to keep up with inflation, your ceo sure as fuck should not be getting an extra 15 million on top of their already existing 15 million a year salary. What was the report? Gmc ceo making 29.5 million a year? Almost $100,000 per work day... average gmc employee isn't even bring that home PER YEAR!
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u/ThatDarnScat 3d ago
The crazy thing is, the amount of profit these mega-corps male, it actually IS feasible to give all of the hourly employees a 40% bump. It's just that it would cause a decrease in profits and shareholder value, and that is not acceptable, for some reason.
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u/GalakFyarr 3d ago edited 1d ago
already existing 15 million a year salary
For a "regular person" to earn a grand total of 15 million over a 30 year career, they need to make 500k a year, no exceptions. This person makes it in one year. Why does this person even need a raise at all. Ever. They could lose their job after a year and never work again.
Average wage in the US was 70k per year in 2020 (according to a simple google search), enjoy your 214 years career to earn 15 million.
EDIT: or to put it in different words, you and I could start a job at federal minimum wage, earning a 10% raise every single year, and at most, we'd still only have earned about 2.5 million dollars total after 30 years of non-stop working. What I'm saying is everyone is supposed to be happy and figure out a way to live their whole life on 5 million dollars (and I've generously doubled the total), while this chucklefuck gets 15 million in one year, and still wants more.
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u/70ms 3d ago
Why does this person even need a raise at all. Ever. They could lose their job after a year and never work again
Because at some point it stops being your bank balance and starts being a high score.
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u/batmessiah 3d ago
That mean average wage is offset by all the rich fucks skewing the average. The median is much lower.
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u/alarumba 3d ago edited 3d ago
Tim Gurner's comments recently help explain why it's not acceptable.
Edit: This man is reprehensible. A truely vile being.
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u/ThatDarnScat 3d ago
What a shithead.
His hair slicks bad reaaaallllyyy nice though (reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buK45NW_ikI)
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u/Goldenrah 3d ago
Especially considering that the wage increase would also be an increase in worker satisfaction, meaning they would produce more.
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u/xninjagrrl 3d ago
I have an idea to replace ceo's and high paid execs with AI who don't get paid at all
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u/bloodylip 3d ago
Yeah but think of what that would do to the economy! No more suckers buying overpriced suits! No more idiots paying way too much for a haircut! No more dunces buying mansions they don't even live in!
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u/morpheousmarty 3d ago
Like yeah, of course it isn't feasible to give 1000s of people a 40% payraise.
The math works out, the raise would still leave the company profitable. The feasibility is 100%, it's literally just different people getting the money.
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u/Velot_ 3d ago
Why not just spread out that 15 million to the workers instead of giving it to a guy who's already making 20mil? It's so odd.
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u/CliplessWingtips 3d ago
It's been years and years of Republican ideologues indoctrinating their followers. I couldn't even tell you when Republican voters last wanted a fair wage.
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u/gsfgf 3d ago
I couldn't even tell you when Republican voters last wanted a fair wage.
Probably the 70s. Nixon wasn't ghoulishly anti-labor, I don't think.
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u/TurkeyMoonPie 3d ago
Bingo late 60-70s with the opening up of the world for "free trade". Jobs and manufacturing being sent around the world for "cheaper" prices in America. Importing sky rocketed. Inflation picked up as profits for a small few picked up.
Single income households had to go to 2 incomes.
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u/1Operator 3d ago edited 3d ago
CliplessWingtips : I couldn't even tell you when Republican voters last wanted a fair wage.
Too many people seem convinced that making the rich richer faster is the only thing that could possibly be "GoOd FoR tHe EcOnOmY" while everything else is "bAd FoR tHe EcOnOmY."
Anything that might slow the rate at which a tiny minority of wealthy people accumulate more wealth & power for themselves is framed as "FrEeLoAdInG" and/or "sOcIaLiSm" and/or "cOmMuNiSm" and/or "eCoNoMiC dIsAsTeR."
A one-way economy that funnels all the money up is inherently rigged.
The problem with winner-take-all is that there's nothing left for everyone else - which is how we ended up with so much wealth concentration/inequality.
Too many seem to believe it is our duty to toil in squalor building our own yokes & shackles to serve an economy that does not serve us.
The needs of the many outweigh the greed of a few.
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u/couchbutt 3d ago
Somewhere around the Reagan administration.
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u/SanityIsOptional 3d ago
Goes back further than that, look to post-ww2 anti-communist sentiment, which also was severely anti-union.
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u/DBeumont 3d ago
Capitalist propaganda has been around forever. The rise of bootlickers probably has s lot to do with the erosion of the education system by conservatives.
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u/morpheousmarty 3d ago
I mean at least since the 1860s. In an area where almost no one could own a slave, 100s of thousands of people died so rich people could not pay people.
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u/atlanticam 3d ago
humans tend to respect and worship the concept of power because evolutionarily the powerful few kept them safe. the concept of money has no evolutionary basis so people intuitively correlate big money with big power and therefore assign that higher value to them because they think they are protecting them
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u/CarlMarcks 3d ago
Or how that 40% is only a chunk of their total profits that just go towards shareholders in the first place.
So workers are being chocked out for stock buybacks and shareholder dividends.
We’re on the losing end of a class war we aren’t even fighting back in.
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u/POD80 3d ago edited 3d ago
I mean, it is worth pointing out that 40% of say 30 million is a very different number than 40% of the total salary of the union workers.
Obviously I get what the workers are saying, but from a price perspective the union position if adopted would have a much greater impact on observed prices.
I'd love to see them meet in the middle and adopt something like a multiple rule, say no worker can make 20 times the lowest paid worker. The CEO takes a massive haircut and the average worker gets a significant raise.
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u/thatVisitingHasher 3d ago
Can we start paying everyone with stock? It’s working for CEOs. Instead of comparing apples to oranges. Let’s pay everyone the same way.
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u/andydude44 3d ago
It’s called a co-ops, stock options, ESOPs, and profit sharing plans. They’re pretty effective compensation methods that a lot of modern companies provide in order to both have an alternative way to sell the company without going public and encourage productivity since they’re part owners. Only very old fashioned, small, and/or incompetent companies do not use one of these tactics in someway nowadays.
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u/dholm 3d ago
I actually did some rough math this weekend when trying to figure out how I should feel about this whole thing.
There are 46,000 UAW employees at GM, currently making an average of $60,000 per year. A 46% increase, as demanded by the UAW, would bring that up to $87,600. GM sold 5.9M cars last year, so that would be an increase of about $215 per car if they decided they didn't want to sacrifice any of their $21B in 2022 gross profits and passed it entirely onto the consumers. The total additional labor cost would be $1.2B, or about 6% of their gross annual profit.
Now, gross profit is just after labor and materials; net earnings, which are taken after things like marketing and software development are accounted for, but are also more difficult to quantify in real terms because they're often "cooked" to say whatever the company wants to say, ended up being half the gross. Still not a terrible haircut.
When we saw auto companies increase their prices by 10% during the pandemic and people still bought cars, would the market be able to bear a 0.5% increase if they announced it was to pay their employees a fair labor rate? I think so.
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u/xninjagrrl 3d ago
bro GM will tack on an extra 215 charge for vehicle and not give their workers a raise lol
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u/jaywastaken 3d ago
Not only will they not give them a raise, they’ll start laying people off to cut costs, raise prices by another 10% and then blame the workers striking on the price increases.
Only thing the bastards understand is profit. It won’t be until customers stop buying their cars that they’ll change.
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u/Gets_overly_excited 3d ago
Yet we generally have to buy cars as a society. And if we stopped, they would just lay people off. Striking is the only way they’ll change. Hence the strike.
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u/ThatDarnScat 3d ago
"Fair wage suppression fee"... you would believe how expensive these negotiation consultants are!!
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u/excaliber110 3d ago
When CEO wages and pay can go up 40% to not affect the price of the car, but raising the wages of the workers is, is when you know markets and executives are in it together, and have separated working class from 'enjoying' pay by creating a system where payment of goods come into play, but stock prices are negatively tied to wage growth. Stocks shouldn't be a lever used against the working class, and profit shouldn't be the end all be all of a company that cannot raise the wage of their lowest worker the same as the highest leader. Tides are only raising up CEO wages and not the people's wages. Pay should generally increase between all employees of their profession, as the company's growth is what everyone contributed to it.
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u/couchbutt 3d ago
Car prices are market driven, not cost driven. I saw an interview with auto-industry journalists. He said an employee of one of the big companies told him off the record, "We don't know where the limit is for what people will pay for a luxury pickup truck. We keep increasing the price every year and haven't yet hit the limit."
A Ford F 150 Raptor is $100,000 btw.
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u/MastodonSmooth1367 3d ago
Prices are both market and cost driven. You cannot sell cars at a loss for 100+ years. It simply doesn't work. Companies like Tesla started out selling at a loss because they figured they could break into the market fast. But it's not like they just kept pumping out the same vehicles they were making 5 years ago. There have been MAJOR manufacturing line optimizations, supply chain leaning-out, value improvement projects, etc galore.
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u/LandSharkUSRT 3d ago
Cost of labor increase over the last 4yrs:3% Cost of vehicle increase over the last 4yrs: 30%
It sure is easy to blame labor when corporate greed is so blatant.
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u/Yourponydied 3d ago
Dealerships still are gouging even tho the supply chain issue has been mostly resolved
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u/deange2001 3d ago
lol right? they can't raise prices much more anyway when a base truck costs $50k and people can barely afford it as is. When it goes to $60 or $70k, shit will sit on the lot and all of the sudden will be sold for much less.
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u/ShitshowBlackbelt 3d ago
I kind of doubt people will stop buying. The terms on the loans will just get longer and longer.
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u/SnackThisWay 3d ago
Redditors love to assume that all labor cost increases will be 1 to 1 offset by price increases. That is not a given (source, literally any microeconomics 101 course). The other possibility is market pressure keeps prices the same and the corporation earns slightly less profit. This is why we need a huge update to anti-trust laws and need to break up monopolies and discourage oligopolies. Healthy competition keeps prices for goods low and wages high
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u/Raspberries-Are-Evil 3d ago
Exactly this.
It not like the cost of the F-150 has gone down every year.
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u/joecool42069 3d ago
Guys.. she’s paid by performance.
What’s that? How well did she perform? No no no.. it’s not based on her performance. It’s not even based on cultivating a good work environment that fostered employee performance.
So what performance you may ask? Good question. Stock price performance.
The layoffs they did allowed for GM to buy back their own stock(something that used to be illegal) to artificially raise the price of the stock.
She worked really really hard to lay people off.. so company could buy back stock. That’s her performance.
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u/alexfi-re 3d ago
This is true stuff that most people don't understand about the corporate grift against most of us regular folks.
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u/cranktheguy 3d ago
Her pay and their pay are diametrically opposed. If theirs goes up hers goes down.
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u/farmallnoobies 3d ago
Not in the long term. Happy employees are more motivated, which helps improve the company's success, which then gets the BOD and shareholders paid. Paying employees will tend to make them more happy
But they're not in it for the long haul. They want a spike in the financials so that they can cash out and retire
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u/LosinCash 3d ago
Good. Record profits, stock buybacks, and wages stagnant as compared to inflation.
Hope they get it all.
And prepare yourselves if you're in the market for a new car in the coming year - just the slowdown in production is going to drive prices up.
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u/cC2Panda 3d ago
You skipped one of the most egregious things. In 1984 and during the 2008 recession the UAW took large hits to their compensation to ensure that the companies would remain competitive globally and wouldn't keep hemorrhaging market share. It worked the Big 3 went from having to cut costs and making shitty vehicles just to try to prevent losing money, to becoming massive profit making companies. Of course the executives never upheld their end of the deal so they never got back the compensation they gave up in full. They should pay the workers, plus back pay, plus benefits for all the time the years they made profit and didn't give a dime back to the labor.
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u/Lolamichigan 3d ago
No cost of living increase since 2008 they were supposed to be temporary concessions.
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u/tofubeanz420 3d ago
Not too mention all the price gouging by dealerships. "Dealer markups"
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u/captchaos03 3d ago
Everyone should strike for higher pay
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u/podsaurus 3d ago
We need a general strike, badly. This wage gap has been out of control for too long.
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u/crumpsly 3d ago
No general strike without more union adoption. Otherwise it's just a bunch of people not showing up to work.
Who organizes the general strike? In the event that the general strike works flawlessly and government and corporations are willing to sit down and negotiate, who do they negotiate with? If things don't go according to plan, how do the workers on strike survive without income?
There is a LOT that goes along with a general strike. And it's only a real threat if the people going on strike are already organized and have money in the bank to actually hold out. So join a union and start paying dues so you can actually think about participating in a general strike if one were to happen.
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u/TheVog 3d ago
There is unfortunately a zero chance of this happening in the Western world. Maybe in France though.
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u/__________________99 3d ago
I hate it, but I'm inclined to agree. I know far too many people personally who don't see anything wrong with our working conditions. Many of them even think unions in general are just greedy and do nothing for workers.
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u/podsaurus 2d ago
I think people put up with a lot more than they should. I know exactly what you're talking about. They settle for less because it's not "that bad" and "It is what it is" (I can't describe to you how much I hate that phrase, such passive resignation). I lose my mind about this a little because things can be a lot better, you don't HAVE the settle for less!
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u/mortalomena 3d ago
Kind of remind me of my companys former CEO. One of the founding owners of the company proposed a 5000€ bonus split between the about 10 line workers if we managed to clear the backlog before our factory shut down for 2 weeks of repairs/summer vacations. Well we pulled 12 hour shifts for 5 days keeping the factory running 24/7, cleared the backlog and were basically wrapping things up on friday afternoon when we notice a new large order popped up on the list which was not agreed upon with us. Well we went on our holidays thinking its a mistake since there was nobody scheduled to stay even more overtime for this phantom order.
Coming back we hear from the CEO that the 5000€ bonus is a nogo since we didnt clear the backlog "among other things". The founding owner was furious, she knew we would NEVER do any OT to help after this scam, she basically got the CEO fired and gave us the 5000€ bonus.
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u/yarash 3d ago
If you say 10% a year for 4 years, it doesn't sound nearly as unreasonable as the media is framing it.
People hear 40% increase and make assumptions, and assumptions about unions. It's almost as if this is worded the way it is on purpose.
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u/MashedPaturtles 3d ago
If each year’s raise is equivalent, it’s actually ~8.7% a year since it’s compounding.
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u/lateralhazards 3d ago
The CEOs should offer to take a pay cut. Problem solved.
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u/lostboy005 3d ago
The workers took a pay cut in 08 so the big three could survive and worker wages haven’t caught up since that time/theyve been behind since that time.
They’re way over due and it’s much more than a ceo pay cut
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u/OrangeInnards 3d ago edited 3d ago
No. Real wage increases need to happen regardless, everywhere in the world. CEOs taking a paycut (by making them pay more into the system) + workers getting more money would be vastly preferrable to them just taking a regular pay cut, where they still making money hand over fist and continue shafting employees.
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u/recalogiteck 3d ago
Unions are why we have a 40 hour instead of 120 hour work week and time and half over 40 hours. Overtime wouldn't exist and neither would the weekend without unions fighting for it.
Sick of seeing some boot lickers cry about the union's demands when boot lickers wouldn't have time to complain if it wasn't for a union.
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u/SweetBabyAlaska 3d ago
Unions also gave us the weekends, stopped child labor, and created safety regulations (so no more radioactive paint and black lung etc..).
A union is just a group of people who decide to withhold their labor and use it as a bargaining chip to be treated fairly... because workers generate the wealth of these billionaires. It's not about political sides or being greedy, it's about collectively coming together to improve working conditions and get fair treatment.
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u/Pesto_Nightmare 2d ago
A union is just a group of people who decide to withhold their labor and use it as a bargaining chip
A group of people using the only legal bargaining chip they have available.
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u/Wild_Bottle6207 3d ago
Didn't their CEO say something along the lines of "our benefits increased because the business is doing good"? Why aren't anyone else's benefits increasing then?
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u/chapeksucks 3d ago
What the CEOs are "missing" by saying bullshit about profit sharing (we all benefit, blah, blah) is that when the economy crashed and the federal government bailed out the auto industry, workers took a pay cut to save the companies and their jobs. Now they want compensation for that. And they should absolutely get it.
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u/Just-Scallion-6699 3d ago
They'll always find a way to kick you. I remember asking my job for a raise and I said I wanted at least 15%. They scoffed because that's a lot for a single raise. Maybe, but I pointed out that they had found excuses to not give anyone on the team raises in 5 years -- some of it was the recession, but by that point it was over. This was on top of totally killing off bonuses, lowering benefits, etc. Didn't seem to affect the lifestyles of management much.
Similarly, these auto workers took paycuts during that whole bailout crisis. Add that shit together and get them where they should be.
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u/sawltydawgD 3d ago
CEO pay should be capped at 20x their lowest worker’s salary. Still huge, but not so egregious.
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u/WatchandThings 3d ago
I'm thinking CEO pay should be capped to a certain (small) percentage of company's overall employee pay. This way if a CEO wants increase in salary they will have to increase pay of existing employees, hire more employees, or a combination of both.
The hiring of more employees would help the national economy in general, and it would help the existing employees by alleviating some of their existing workload. Also this might cause companies to start fighting for more man power giving workers more leverage to demand better pay and conditions anyway.
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u/mjconns 3d ago
I'm thinking CEO pay should be capped to a certain (small) percentage of company's overall employee pay. This way if a CEO wants increase in salary they will have to increase pay of existing employees, hire more employees, or a combination of both.
If you don't tie that to domestic FTEs, you're going to see a huge rise in outsourcing and/or contract work.
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u/kkngs 3d ago
You could cap it at 100x and it would still be an effective rule. CEO pay is out of control.
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u/PrivatePoocher 3d ago
Any state that mandates that will instantly see its billionaire CEOs bail ship. It has to be a federal mandate, but it won't because everyone is pro cash in the senate. Except Bernie.
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u/FlashisSpeed 3d ago
They should go further and restrict what executives can be paid. Set a hard limit. None of this bullshit of being paid 30 plus million. No manager of a publicly traded company should make that.
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u/DarkR124 3d ago
Love to see it.
Loving all these strikes and fights for better pay. This shit has gone on for so much longer than it should have. Cost of living continues to skyrocket, companies rake in record profits, and salaries stay stagnant, or receive very small bumps.
Hope these continue to fuel other industries to stand up and demand fair pay.
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u/asdaaaaaaaa 3d ago
What I find funny is that when the floor guys stop working, everything stops. I've never heard of a company having to stop because of their CEO though. Having run some jobs, leadership really isn't all that hard if you know what you're doing. Dealing directly with clients and customer-service stuff is a lot more difficult and stressful, especially when you're not being paid millions to make decisions with other people's money.
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u/ralts13 3d ago
For businesses with a good organisational structure itll usually take months without a someone filling an executive role for things to break down. Usually. from stagnation due to loss of the key decision makers. Its a sign that the business works.
Its just sad that none of them are really required to ensure their workers can have a proper standard of living.
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u/SamStrike02 3d ago
If a company has to stop because of their CEO, then that CEO did a bad job
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u/R8dernAshun 3d ago
As a former auto worker who’s plant was shut down in 2010 thanks to GMs restructuring, it’s time my fellow UAW members got paid fairly for their hard work. Assembly work is no joke and can break your body down quick with the repetitive motion. Solidarity!
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u/MidNiteR32 2d ago
We should have just let GM, Chrysler and Ford fail in 2008. That's capitalism baby...
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u/Odd-Notice-7752 3d ago
these headlines are so misleading. it's less than 9% raise annually, which compounds to 40% over the next 4 years. it's good, but not an obscene request like the headline tries to frame it.
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u/Utter_Rube 3d ago
Many of these articles also fail to mention that UAW workers agreed to a wage freeze around 2008 and never got that money back.
If they'd merely received COL increases in line with inflation, the "outrageous" 40% ask would be more like 10%.
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u/LardHop 2d ago
On an slightly related note. Our company had a meeting discussing how we overwhelmingly exceeded the growth projections due to a competitor closing and thus brought us a lot of new clients
"Congrats to our team and our developers for being able to handle the increased workload. It is due to your efforts that we're doing this well"
Then literally on the next slide after all the fanfare
"We will require all our contractors to take a 2 week mandatory (unpaid because we're contractors) time off before the end of the year because we're trying to hit our goal "profit margins".
Fuck all of them. I'll be doing the barest minimum I can do on a job for the rest of my fucking life.
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u/you_can_not_see_me 2d ago
everyone should support this. doesn't matter if you're American or not. globally, the working class are being taken advantage of.
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u/sugar_addict002 3d ago
Good. Record profits and record profit margins. It is past time to spread the wealth.
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u/Mad_Juju 3d ago
I don't work in a related field, but a 40% increase in pay would essentially solve every problem I have. I hope they get it.
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u/VegasKL 3d ago edited 3d ago
One issue is when CEO's started to get paid in stock options. Sure, their base pay is still large, but it's not as egregious. When you tie a huge portion of that to the stock valuation you incentivize them to cut and slash by all means to maintain a high return for the shareholders.
That is their job, to return value to stakeholders .. but it's the switch to that rational that has led to outsourcing, wage stagnation, offshoring, and a host of other tricks that aren't discouraged like they should be (as they often move currency out of our circulation).
Economically, it's not the executives or rich shareholders that will drive our economy, it's the employees .. because they spend a far more amount of their paycheck back into the economy which keeps currency in circulation (not being hoarded away).
I'm not sure what the fix would be, but for starters we could heavily limit stock buybacks (which just funnel profits back up to the shareholders and away from labor). Maybe a (large) special tax on stock option returns for executives?
We used to tax the highest earners around 90%, iirc. The point was that you were making so much money to begin with in that bracket, even 10% was a huge hauling. It made it so that you had to spend to get your tax bill down, because otherwise Uncle Sam was going to take it. What did you spend it on? The wider economy.
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u/JesusofAzkaban 3d ago
That is their job, to return value to stakeholders .. but it's the switch to that rational that has led to outsourcing, wage stagnation, offshoring, and a host of other tricks that aren't discouraged like they should be (as they often move currency out of our circulation).
Yep, per the case of Dodge v. Ford, the corporation must be run in such a way as to maximize benefits for the shareholders, rather than in the best interests of the employees. However, under the Business Latitude Rule, an executive could argue that improving working conditions for employees is a long term maximization of benefits for the shareholders, which is CostCo's strategy - CostCo offers higher base wages and cooperates with labor unions more than its competitors do. But these executives don't care about sustainability or employee welfare - just short term profits that they can wave around to justify bonuses.
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u/ItzMcShagNasty 3d ago
I just hope this is the beginning of something beautiful, where the dumbass useless ownership class get's fucked bad because of how greedy they have been and are reduced to ashes. There should be no billionaires.
Hell, I think every dime you make over $10 Million should get straight up confiscated by the gov't and sent to the IRS/treasury/education depts to help fix our fucked up country and make it better. There is no reason we can't use that money to buy a utopia.
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u/Downtown_Skill 3d ago
I really hope this spreads..... Hollywood writers are essentially on strike for very similar reasons (stagnant wages etc...) Because executives in every industry are parasites sucking everything they can get away with from the workers.
Unfortunately, if this starts actually picking up steam, I feel like we'll either see a shift to where the media starts attacking the workers or the media will stop reporting a lot on it.
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u/addiktion 3d ago
If we get enough strikes going (Writers Strike, Auto Strike, Poor Strike, Consumer strike) maybe something big will happen with these outrageous fucking inflated (artificially mind you in a lot of cases) prices that corporations are driving and weak ass pay structures.
And NO, printing more money is not the answer which will only make the problem worse. We don't need more government hand outs.
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u/gringoloco01 3d ago
So we always hear the same thing from CEOs
We get paid on the profitability of the company and through stock shares. Yet they also get bonuses and a salary.
Can someone explain to me like I am five how this is different than what regular people get paid.
Honestly though. Is there a real difference that the regular joe IS missing. I don't see it. Are there any CEOs on here who want to explain the risk and the difference.
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u/MossRock42 3d ago
At least they have a union to bargain for a new contract. Most American workers have to accept whatever pay/benefits their employer offers.
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u/Sunchi_Adventures 3d ago
Hmmm spend 9B to continue making profits or don’t, and risk bankruptcy, I don’t know guys. These CEO might need a pay raise in order to figure this one out.
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u/florinandrei 2d ago edited 2d ago
the same rate their CEOs' pay grew in recent years
Excellent ask. The more people become aware that something like this is happening, the better. This is exactly what's needed. Heck, in a just world it should be retroactive over the last several decades when the CEO pay rocketed into orbit, while regular folks got just a few extra peanuts.
Normally I'm averse to "viral" stuff, but this news should be shouted from the rooftops.
“I’m extremely frustrated and disappointed,” Barra told CNBC Friday morning. “We don’t need to be in strike right now. We put a historic offer on the table.”
Oh, really? Then how about you take a major pay cut, you bloodsucker.
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u/8-bit-Felix 3d ago
Workers getting comparable compensation to their masters?
Inconceivable!
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u/itonlyhurtswhenigasp 3d ago
After all the wage cuts and give backs that they've had over the years it's good to see the leadership change. Stand Fast Brothers!
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u/youaretherevolution 3d ago
A lot of these articles leave out the fact that workers agreed to a paycut during the 2008 financial crisis to help save the car industry.
Their original wages were never renewed.