Why are employees so demanding?!

Okay, got to admit, this one triggered my anger and reminds of my yearly company townhall where I ask the same question about employee attrition.

Burn it all to the ground already. This whole fucking system.

But we can somehow afford $150,000,000 in stock buybacks!
My employer actually did this. They even told us they had no money for raises. We found out why by reading the SEC filings.
- What they meant to say is: "we don't have money for raises if we're going to add more value for shareholders (who are more important to us than you are)"
  
  The harder they try to do that the more our stock moves in the other direction.
  I guess the short sellers are happy.

More like:
“After giving our executive team record bonuses, we can’t afford to pay you a living wage.”
- Potato, potahto.
  The budget doesn't prioritize you.
  
  Well, it does… Just not in the way you think. It prioritizes how much labor they can exploit from you before you quit. Or form a union.
  The doesn’t account for, of course, all of the money they spend on lawyers to weasel their way around the law. Actually paying their employees a living wage would cost not only much less than that, but it would provide them greater profits as well.
  They’re not doing it because it really makes business sense. That’s just an excuse. They’re doing it to be fascist and cruel. Because that’s what fascists are: cruel.
- Meh. Lemmy hates me when I point this out, but executive compensation is a drop in the bucket vs. gross or even profit. It's just not a big deal, but they make a fine target to shoot at. Easy to see and focus on.
  Did the math on American Airlines a couple of years ago. If their CEO took a $0 salary, every single employee could get a $.19/hr. raise. (It was worse than that, but I forget, don't want to exaggerate. Think it worked out to <$250/yr. bonus, if that. Chicken change.)
  They're fucking us by death of a thousand cuts, but CEO pay isn't it.
  
  If you have to point to one single problem it's shareholders, Dodge vs Ford (1916) established shareholder supremacy, so the point of any company isn't to produce widgets or employ people or pay the CEO, it's to produce value for the shareholders, end of story. All things serve this master purpose.
  I worked at a privately held $1b manufacturing company recently, they were doing record profits, cut employee bonuses based on some bullshit metric we "failed to hit," all the money was just pouring into the owning family's pockets. Their private helicopter trips were the purpose of our labor. Their shopping excursions to Europe. Sadly, this is a highly politically active family in conservative politics, funding the Heritage foundation over decades.
  
  Are you including stock stuff in this calculation?
  I had a recruiter reach out to me for a job that was focused on facilitating people using stock as collateral to get personal loans. I think that's one of the mechanisms rich people use to leverage their non-cash wealth without paying taxes. I told him that sounded like it should be illegal, and that was the end of that.
  
  As others pointed out, salary is only one part of executive packages.
  Their CEO is not the only exorbitantly paid executive.
  Even if that was so, cumulative effects across society from this standardized system of disproportionate remuneration can be massive. Every major firm, or nearly every major firm, pays into this system - every firm that goes under on a narrow margin is killed in part because the grain supplier must charge an extra 3% (using a random-if-high number for demonstration) over the rest of their costs and profits calculations for the exorbitant wage of their execs - that price is factored into the flour supplier's cost - who also then must charge an extra 3% on top of that for their execs- that price is factored into the bread supplier's cost - likewise, who must charge an extra 3% for THEIR execs - and that price is factored into the local grocery store, who, again, must both factor the raised costs caused by paying all the previous companies' execs, and pay their own execs the remuneration they are accustomed to. The end result is a massive burden on the consumer that many do not fully understand is inherent to the system.
  Even if we exclude cumulative effects, a 20 cent raise is 400$ per year per person.
  
  Meh. Giving bonuses, dividends, and then posting profits, whilst paying a dogshit wage is incredibly tone deaf. Do you know who generated that wage?

They actually want people to quit. The problem is the wrong people are quitting.
Not paying people a proper wage is such a short sight view but when all you care about is the next quarter, kind of makes sense.
- The kind of people who leave because they're dissatisfied with their employer are the ones who more easilly find jobs elsewhere, and those are generally the most competent and/or in higher demand hence harder to find replacements for.
  Whilst there is a subset of highly competent and in high demand people who just stick with their employer no matter what (be it because they're highly adverse to change or just fearful), in my experience those tend to spent most of their professional career in one or two employeers and professionally suffer from the problem of "never having seen more than one way of doing things" so are IMHO (and as far I could see when I crossed paths with such people) limited in how far they can grow as professionals because they only really know one or two styles of working environment.
  That said, "modern" management is short-termist and doesn't invest in people, so they repeatedly short-change and generally shaft people for the sake of their own next bonus, in the process losing the capabilities for competitive advantage versus the competition or merely mid and long term efficiency.
  
  None of this is wrong, however, management wants the more tenured (read: more experienced) people to move on because they're earning more than others.
  They believe, often incorrectly, that the skilled workers job can be filled in for by the rest of the employee pool, and they will just fill in the hours gap with a lower-paid newbie.
  In reality, the higher paid/higher experience people are often holding things together, so when they walk out the door because you treated them like they were nothing, all hell breaks loose; often resulting in most of the team leaving.
  On paper, this makes management happy, because the cost of wages goes down, but when the revenue also takes a dip because shits fucked and nobody knows how to fix it, they (hopefully) start to realize how dumb of a decision they made. Unlikely as that seems.
  At a previous job, there was a fairly typical air of nobody taking about wages. I have and continue to be of the mindset: fuck that. If I'm making more than you, and you're doing the same job, you should go get yours. If I'm making less than everyone else, I need to go get mine. If the current employer won't pony up, then find someone who will... Anyways, as a direct result of a discussion I had at work, with coworkers, one of the longest standing employees found a better job. Good thing too. I wasn't there for a while lot longer either (not wage related for me, but still).... It was not a great workplace.
  What I'm hoping we see is that the highly skilled talent walks out, and they have to pay more to get someone similarly skilled to replace them in order to keep things running.
  But that assumes these capitalist fucks learn anything at all. In my experience, few ever do.
- We're in end-stage capitalism now, not even the longevity of a business matters next to shareholder profits.
  
  If profits go down, shareholders will just move on to more profitable stocks.
  Any publicly traded company is going to be the same.... Many privately held companies will also be the same, it's just that the shareholders will be the ones running the show.... Which might be worse in some cases.
- The problem is the wrong people are quitting.
  Ah, the Dead Sea Effect. Ever a learning opportunity.
  
  You think these golden parachute fucks are going to learn ???!?
  Hilarious.
- Yeah, some employers are stupid like that, but any with the brains of a hamster can see that a revolving door is costly.
  Unemployment insurance for example. I can only speak to Florida, but for each new hire the company has to pay in $7,500 (this is old data, haven't been in the payroll game for 6-years). Once that's covered for the year, GTG. Replace that employee? Clock starts again.
  Again on unemployment, if a company is getting hit with tons of unemployment claims, their rate goes up. And no, the company is not directly paying your claim anymore than they directly pay for a worker's comp injury. The insurance pays it and their rates go up accordingly.
  Anyway, I guess shit employers have figured in these costs and find that shit wages benefit them. On paper. Back to worker's comp; Isn't it better to retain experienced employees that know how to work safely?! We can all come up with 1,000 other examples of experienced employee's labor being worth far more than the new guy's work.
  Every company I've known or worked at that paid fair wages was rock and roll in their industry. LOL, you should hear me go off about Quik Trip. Imagine making a career out of a gas station job. People do and those people make bank.
  
  Unemployment insurance for example.
  Most states only give unemployment benefits if you're let go, not if you quit in most circumstances.

Our performance was so great last year that the performance bonus will be 50% higher than usual. Meanwhile the company will reduce the headcount by 5-10% and they just announced that they will remove the free coffee to save costs...

What will these C-Suite guys do with just one car or one boat? You think they dont have feelings? You think they don't have problems? How do you expect them to keep up with the other execs they golf with?
Your labor is a sacrifice to their well being. Take solace in the fact that your non raise will go to at least 50 gallons of gas for the boat.
- It's your duty to sacrifice so the ruling class can prosper!
  Yeah it's bullshit, that's why I work for myself. Nobody else is profiting off the decay of my body but ME.

Employee retention is not difficult right now. Hiring is on pause everywhere. Layoffs have been sweeping through over and over. It’s an employer’s market right now, through and through. Companies are looking for ways to get people to quit, not complaining about low retention.