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I decided to look up some numbers and do some math.
So the CEO earns 362x the average employee at GM. Basically if they took the CEO’s pay and redidsteubuted it, they could double the pay of 362 lucky workers at GM. Or take twice as many workers as that and increase their pay by 50%.
But how many workers are there and how far will this CEO’s pay go?
GM has 167,000 employees. Collectively, their pay totals 167,000x the salary of the average employee. Very basic.
Now let’s add the CEO’s pay to that sum: we are now up to a sum of money equal to 167,362x the average salary.
And if we distribute that amongst all the employees, that’s:
167,362/167,000
Get out your calculator and you’ll see that this would fund a two-tenths of one percent raise for all employees. That’s 0.002%
The pay is very unfair. But we should be realistic that the CEO is one person and their fat salary doesn’t actually go very far in terms of worker raises.
Let’s do the math in reverse: to give all GM employees just a 2% raise would cost 9.2x the CEO’s salary. And the workers want a 40% raise over 4 years.
I hope they get it. I believe that money is there and currently going to the entire executive layer, the board, and shareholders. But when anyone tries to oversimplify and it make it all about the CEO’s salary, I cringe a bit because it really isn’t that meaningful a sum of money, unfair as it may be.
We should be looking at profit or better EBITDA and showing how easily it could be used to raise worker pay.
It's not about taking the CEO's pay and redistributing it, like some game of lotto.
The point is that the culture and structure of the company is geared towards rewarding the dickhead at the top, for squeezing their workers.
The companies don't see their workers as assets but instead as adversaires that are to be exploited and paid as little as possible, no matter the cost to quality, loyalty or morale.
Somehow there is no money for the workers, yet the car prices have exploded and the board makes shit loads of money....
You’re right. I’m only saying that Robert Reich’s framing “there’s money for” this not that isn’t great: it’s like saying “Oh so we have money for a new blender but not a car???”
Your framing is superior
Tbph this is why Reich has a reputation for kind of populist pseudoscience. Tries to bank on sounding like he's pushing an "economic justice" angle but a ton of what he says doesn't really hold water. It's actually really annoying cause you can't push for a correct take without people just automatically assuming you're defending CEOs and megacorps.
It's because he positions himself as an economic expert despite having no degrees in economics
Looked it up when you replied, he does have some kind of multidisciplinary degree that sort of covers it. Not that it really changes anything.
The board makes money? Isn't that a conflict of interest? What are the board, and c Suite paid? It's not just the CEO here...
I click for the outrage, but stay for the rational discussion.
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While the CEO salary is often the talking point, the bigger number is often the stock buybacks.