CEO pay up 1,460% while typical workers’ pay up just 18.1%

The United Auto Workers contract with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis (the current company owning Chrysler) expired Thursday night. The news Friday morning was that the UAW had called strikes at one plant of each company. This is the first time they called a strike at all three at the same time. Strikes will be called at more plants if the talks drag on without a deal. I worked in the auto industry for close to three decades. I had an office job so was not in the union. I went to work during strikes (I was far from any plant). And when the new contract was signed what improvements the union members got I also got. I benefited from the union. The central issue of the strike is, of course, money. The union gave concessions to keep the companies in business during the Great Recession. Now the companies are making big profits and the union says it is time to get back what they gave up. The companies are saying we need the money for the transition to electric vehicles. The union says EVs are good (though require fewer workers) but those battery plants you’re building had better be unionized. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, showed how clueless top management be. Her compensation is 362 times more than the median pay for workers at her company. Compensation for the CEOs of Ford and Stellantis are similar. Barra saw a 34% increase in her salary (time frame not mentioned) and she thought a 20% increase for workers was good enough. Einenkel concluded:

According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEOs for the top 350 U.S. firms made about 20 times more than their typical worker in 1965. Between 1978 and 2021, CEO pay has increased 1,460% while typical workers’ wages have increased just 18.1%. You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize-winning economist to understand this isn’t a workable model.

Yeah, that’s what this strike is about. Hunter of Kos reported the nasty guy and DeathSantis went to Washington to court some conservative organizations. Among them is Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. It has been quite a while since I’ve come across those names. So I did a scan of blog entries. Between 2010 and 2016 I wrote about Perkins nine times. The last time to lament he had been appointed to the Republican Platform Committee. That lament is because the FRC has been designated a hate group by the SPLC because Perkins’ lies about LGBTQ people are used to justify our oppression. I have more laments because national media still likes to quote Perkins and candidates for the White House still think visiting him is important. Hunter explained the attraction:

Because what's important is that Donald Trump hates: He hates good and hard and often. That is the motivating force that drives anyone and everyone who would travel to Washington, D.C., to attend a Family Research Council event.

Last Monday Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about Republicans and taxes.

If Hunter Biden is behind on his taxes, it’s the worst crime in the world and worthy of a congressional probe spanning three House committees. If anyone else is dodging their taxes, that’s just smart.

That sentiment is playing out in the Republican demand to rescind the big budget increase for the IRS. Sen. Chuck Grassley warns of an IRS strike force with AK-15s ready to shoot a small business owner. That budget increase also comes with guidance on who the newly hired agents should focus their attention. * Those with income over $1 million with more than $250K in back taxes. * Construction contractors who pay multiple subcontractors, because that’s frequently a sign that those subcontractors are really shell companies to funnel money back to the rich owner. * High income earners who use foreign bank accounts, because that’s a way to hide income. * Large transactions in digital currency because that’s also a way to hide income.

So the IRS is coming after rich people who are known to be behind in their taxes, and groups who are going out of their way with shell companies, foreign accounts, and digital currency to hide their real income. All of which sounds … pretty darn reasonable. And it certainly raises a question: Why are Republicans so anxious to stop these audits?

Sumner also wrote about ways legislatures in red states are stripping power from urban voters. That’s things they do beyond portraying cities as a “crime-ridden, corrupt, dysfunctional hellhole,” a phrase recently used against Chicago. There were states that overturned local efforts to encourage students to wear masks during the pandemic, to overturn attempts to protect immigrants, to disband a board looking into the use of deadly force against black people, to usurp control of elections in Houston and Harris County, to overturn requirements that construction workers get water breaks, to take control of Jackson, Mississippi away from its black residents, and much more.

A 2018 law review article showed that as Republicans gained more power in state legislatures following 2010 redistricting, they used that authority to bear down on cities. “The past decade has witnessed the emergence and rapid spread of a new and aggressive form of state preemption of local government action across a wide range of subjects, including among others firearms, workplace conditions, sanctuary cities, anti-discrimination laws, and environmental and public health regulation.”