The historic UAW strike puts an exclamation point on more than a decade of efforts by Washington lawmakers to narrow the pay gap between top executives and workers.

  • Travalaaaaaaanche!
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    101 year ago

    That’s kind of a false equivalency though. Most laborers are not given any stock-based compensation, and those that are rarely given enough for it to make much of a difference in lives, if they’re even employed there long enough to accrue much. If motivation and alignment of interests between shareholders and employees is actually their argument, shouldn’t all employees be given similar stock-based compensation then? I don’t believe that businesses should be based on shareholder value at all (let alone the fact that the stock and debt markets seem to run our entire economy now), but based on actual, delivered value of services or products to customers. The argument that shareholder value is more important than employee pay and benefits (or human/environmental/legal rights, as it actually plays out) just creates more ways for people to be exploited and held down.

    • @SCB
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      -41 year ago

      What do you see as a false equivalency? My point is the actual harm skyrocketing CEO pay does is result in a more difficult time for companies that get their C-suite poached away.

      I’m not equating anything. Worker pay is independent from CEO pay in that capping CEO pay has no expected impact on employee wages. Companies are already paying the market rate - they’re unlikely to just raise wages forever because of this.

      We can have our own opinions on the ethics of that, but if we’re not running companies, that doesn’t matter. If you wanna fight for fair wages, you’ve got to live in reality.