According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,322% since 1978. That means that CEOs were paid 351 times as much as a typical worker in 2020. CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay and because so much of their pay (more than 80%) is stock-related, not because they are increasing their productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills.
As a result, what we’re experiencing now is the vicious cycle of ever-growing inequality between ordinary workers and stratospheric earners, like Musk or Bezos. EPI states that “the economy would suffer no harm if CEOs were paid less (or were taxed more).”
So when economics journalist Patrick W. Watson shared this illuminating tweet pointing out that deceitful and greedy CEOs can’t go on like this anymore, it generated a lot of responses. Many people chimed in to share their views on the subject matter, so scroll through the best ones below.
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My work told us that they had a record year in profits. So they were going to share a piece of the pie with all of us. And then they brought out actual pies. Actual f**king pies so that they could share a ‘piece of the pie’. If I wasn’t so poor I would’ve quit right then and there.
Reminds me of the end of 2021 when my director told me she couldn't approve the maximum raise for a third of my staff, who met all performance criteria. She said it would get flagged by corporate. Turns out she was the final approver, corporate doesn't question her performance ratings at all. Thank God I called her bluff and will be able to give out some nice raises this year.
My boss literally did this at the end of the year: "We projected 10 million in revenue and we cleared 12 million!" Immediately became "we appreciate all your hard work and everything you do, but we can't afford to give you a raise that keeps up with inflation."
The Fortune 500 company where I used to work did this as well. In a town hall they went over the last quarter and projected profits and how we’d reached goals and someone asked if they were going to reinstate the bonuses that had been frozen. Their answer was no, and basically told us that they knew best how to invest that money. Their practices got more and more abusive, but everyone needs trash disposal so they’re not going anywhere soon.
Bored Panda reached out to one Redditor who preferred to stay anonymous, who shared their own experience in response to this thread: “Reminds me of the end of 2021 when my director told me she couldn't approve the maximum raise for a third of my staff, who met all performance criteria. She said it would get flagged by corporate. Turns out she was the final approver, corporate doesn't question her performance ratings at all. Thank God I called her bluff and will be able to give out some nice raises this year.”
The Redditor told us that their initial reaction to this situation was confusion. “She's normally pretty great when it comes to the employee experience, and she even applauded me for trying to get more for my people. I honestly think she's just been conditioned by 'corporate propaganda,' if you will, to try and protect the bottom line.”
“I've worked for this company for 11 years and I've found that tons of directors and VPs make decisions just because they think that's the way it is. When we research policies or procedures, 'the way it is' holds no water. Their boss fed them a line and as they ascended into positions of power, they kept regurgitating it,” they explained.
My favorite was telling the employees themselves how great our profits are, then performance reviews came around and suddenly they can't afford raises.
My work does it all the time
"we in a good place with covid, thr company is making 50 million profit a month"
"sadly the legislation has changed amd now we have removed 70% of your paid sick days, didnt have to... Just make more money"
My coworker was furious when the news drop that our company has had the best profits ever and yet just a week prior to he was denied a raise because "we can't afford to."
When asked about greedy CEOs and directors, the Redditor said they definitely feel entitled. “Especially directors in massive organizations, a lot of them did start on the ground floor and move up and now they feel entitled to recognition and bonuses,” they said and added that “As for CEOs, they'll feed you the standard line of shit that they 'worked 20-hour days' etc. when really, data shows they're just lucky and had opportunity provided by a cushy family life.”
Having said that, the Redditor believes that the pay inequality is “disgusting.” “These people have no idea what it's like to actually be a front-line employee. They have no empathy, and no desire to understand how it really works. The irony of people insulated, in executive echo chambers, working from home, trying to push their most vulnerable workers back into the field is really depressing.”
The best part is when they brag about record profits so you look at the publicly available financial statement and see that 30% of those profits are because they cancelled raises and staff costs didnt rise as expected.
Yes they usually list how much they expect to increase staff pay. So they factored in raises already but then cancelled them and bragged to staff about taking that money away from them and making it as a profit that went to giving executives a 50% bonus on salary...
The best are the humble brags around the holidays or when a big milestone was hit.
The CEO sends a company-wide email saying, "Happy Holidays! Thanks for a great year everybody!"
... And it's a picture of the inside of his giant house with a $10k espresso machine in the kitchen; his fat mitts holding up a glass with a spherical ice cube in it; and a bottle of 30-year old Scotch in the background.
It usually comes over the weekend before Xmas when a bunch of people are actually still working to hit another imaginary deadline on December 23rd.
I got laid off from Starbucks corporate along with about 350 other people. Some tenured for 25 years.
A month later, they posted record quarterly profits and cited "operational efficiency" as the cause.
F**k Starbucks and f**k profits over people.
Did some research and the average including overhead is about 1 dollar per cup sold. Black coffee is 5 cents and a double mocha what the f**k ever can cost them 75 cents. They have the 800 percent profit on everything.then only hire part time to avoid benefits. Bull s**t
The Redditor also shared their own idea for pay and wealth inequality. “The company I work for actually addressed it and I think it's a great idea. So, a lot of capitalist sympathizers will use the line, 'well they're not sitting on cash, they just have stock.' Okay, fine. Companies can start giving out restricted stock units. The same way they offer executives stock packages, give some of that to the frontline. CEOs can still keep controlling interest even if they give thousands of RSUs to their lowest-tier workers,” they said and added that “That's a great way to distribute wealth and reduce turnover.”
They continued: “I also think we need legislation to address the pay gap. Even without stock units, executives are still paid 10x, 20x, 30x their entry-level positions in cash. We need to legislate that out of existence. Studies show time after time that increasing the income for anyone making less than ~$60k/year will directly feed all of that money back into the economy. The corporations will make it back!”
I'm from Europe and the current company i work for started 4 years ago. They had the investment capital for a quick start and the revenue generated is as follows, roughly
nothing > 200k > 10 mil > 30 mil.
Wages are the same as they were whey the company was operating at a loss in its opening year.
My previous CEO asked where I lived and when I told him he responded with why I didn't live closer to work. I told him that he didn't pay enough (one of the most affluent neighborhood in San Diego). Moron had the surprised Pikachu face but I knew he knew. F**k that guy.
Also double reported my income to the IRS and the onus was on ME to prove otherwise. I provided the IRS with all my account documents as if I was providing a self-audit. The IRS never bothered him. F**k America. It's built for the rich.
Name and shame: snapIoT (iot) aquired by Covance under LabCorp division. Still run by the s**tty and useless CEO
My company just pulled our covid sick pay yesterday and we've posted record profits for 8 quarters in a row.
You had Covid sick pay? I work in medical and we've never had anything like that!
I think it was pretty hilarious when my husband's company told him he couldn't get a raise because they can't afford to do raises right now while simultaneously telling their shareholders that they had a record year of profits have over 10 million in the bank and giving out a 2.5 million dollar shareholder payout.
Then after they had a mass quitting they decided to up the pay what they claim will be a 5% raise. But when you sit down and do the math it actually is less than 2%. So an extra $20 a week on average. But still puts them about $500 a week behind their closest competitors pay rate. But they don't understand why everybody's leaving.
My company made 6 billion or so during the last year. $100 bonus.
Here in Canada I don't work for a multi-million dollar corporation but got a $500 Christmas bonus.
My boss would do this. I worked at a privately owned daycare. They had 3 locations. My boss would brag online about buying Gucci with her daughter, and she would buy new cars all the time, but then would say she can't afford to give us raises or benefits because she is "already in debt from using my own money to pay your wages." She would also call us stupid and say we don't deserve to make $15 and hour. Heck she even hemmed and hawed about the government forcing her to give us paid sick leave, and tried to make it so we had to give 2 weeks advanced notice to use it, and that it was only for medical emergencies.
I worked for a small company that once cancelled the Christmas bonuses and raises because of the collapse in 2008. The company was still millions in profit. We only had about 40 employees. The last minute the owner decides he wants to take us out to Chinese for a Christmas dinner. The day of the dinner in a meeting with about 15 workers, he plays a slideshow of his recent vacation to Peru after the financials. He said, ”here’s where we took a plane tour”. All of us couldn’t believe how disconnected and his lack empathy. I left shortly after for a job making twice as much in a different field. He showed up at my job months later to see if I could get him a discount on his car repair at another store, my store owned…
Insurance company I used to work for (Unitedhealth Care) a few years ago announced no real raises (base 1% or something) for the 3rd year in a row. Couple weeks later it was announced that they had record breaking $4B quarterly PROFITS. They had to send out an email to the company saying it was not "real" money they could give out to employees.
United Healthcare is the absolute WORST company. They are right up there with Comcast.
Sounds like the place I used to work. They announced record Q1 profits in 2020 due to COVID driving demand for their product through the roof. Then on the very same call they announced they were reducing 10% of their workforce because "other manufacturing companies are downsizing due to the pandemic and it would be a disservice to our shareholders if we didn't do the same."
They also announced on that same call that anyone who remained with the company would be giving the company 10-25% of their paychecks (based on pay grade) for the next year as a "loan" which would be paid back to them in 2021. They used that "loan" exclusively for stock buybacks.
A few years back, my company sent out an email lauding the efforts that got us to a $94 BILLION profit that year.
A week later, they changed our healthcare to be considerably more expensive. Raises were 2% for "exceeds expectations" ratings.
Their justification? "We have to draw down costs so we can remain competitive". That's all the employees are to the CEOs: costs. They pay lip service to our work getting them their profits, then immediately turn around and say that we're costing the company money.
My company went public last year and it was easily the best bargaining chip I had when they tried to say COVID had impacted us hugely and they couldn't afford raises this year. I literally had our public financial statements in my hands to show them and ask them to explain where exactly they were losing money and how they couldn't afford to give even cost of living increases, how they could tell shareholders that things were looking great, and yet be sitting across from me telling me the exact opposite.
Didn't really matter since they couldn't afford to lose me either way but it was great to not be blind to the company's finances going in.
Literally buy 1 share and then you get all the reports plus can force questions at stockholders meetings
When I worked for Starbucks corporate, this happened every quarter.
"We beat projections, but not by as much as we told wall street we'd beat projections, so everybody please buckle down and work harder. Here's your 1.4% yearly raise".
Get f**ked, Howard.
Same here... biggest bank in Australia, several billion in profits, did really well during COVID, but said "we couldn't pay out full bonuses this year, and had to have mass redundancies because of COVID" when in reality it was all about maximising their profits.
Companies pretend that bonuses have anything to do with ones own performance. Performance is a tiny part of it, most of it is how much they choose to actually allocated to the bonus pool. This then gets divided based on "performance", which really is "who did the boss like the most, or who does he need/value the most at the moment".
That's why when companies say "our base salary is lower because our bonus structure is so good" I pass. I want my guaranteed income to be high, not potential income.
I had an old job that every year would boast records profits and its status as an “industry leader”, yet somehow they couldn’t find a few bucks to spare for providing free coffee for employees or increasing wages. Fortunately enough people left (including me), and I’ve heard from old friends who still work there that management is now providing free coffee and has increased wages and started providing annual cash bonuses. It’s heartwarming to hear this, but it really sucks that the only way to make this happen is to force a company’s hand via mass exodus.
I still remember when I worked for an insurance company and they didn’t have enough phones to go around so some of us were told to use our own cell phones. The day before that they were boasting about how much they made the previous year and so I said out loud how come a man that just pocketed 25 million last year can’t afford to buy a few more phones for HIS business. I didn’t work there much longer.
Boss: I met with the director and VP and it was a tough choice but we just can’t afford a raise for you this year.
Boss the next day: I just got a new, fully loaded MacBook Pro
Director the next day: I just got a new, gold Apple Watch
VP the next day: I have to leave early today to go pick up my new Mercedes SUV
But how else are my company Executives supposed to afford a private jet? What, you want them to fly on an airplane with other people on?? /s
The last 40+ years would say yes you can. I blame Reagan
I just posted above about where’s the “trickle down”. The CEO’s have rain gutters to prevent that.
This just says I can pay you more but choose not to so that people with too much money can make more.
The downside of capitalism. Greed can put my great great grandkids through Harvard but f**k the guy that worked 70 hours a week for my CEO golden umbrella package.
The other trick my old company used to pull:
"Our sales are down 10% this quarter, we need to step it up!"
(Me, being an outside sales representative, with a laptop full of data, finds out our sales are almost double last year, so I ask him privately about that discrepancy)
"I meant we were down from our PROJECTED sales."
So, we aren't "down" at all. We just aren't "up" as much as you'd hoped... got it.
This is exactly what they told us, they wanted feedback on the number one complaint customers had, and the answer was the extra fees that appeared out of nowhere, the managements reply was that it couldn’t be that since they are making record profits. Fast forward a few months,staff is burned out and they are trying to get us to “cheer” up by bringing up the holidays, one of my coworkers mentioned raises, and that was shut down immediately, they basically said no, we can’t afford them, total f**king bulls**t, if I didn’t need the health insurance right now, I would’ve walked a long time ago, and you better believe I’ve been looking for something else, for an employee shortage, no one wants to pay a living wage, greedy bastards.
For once, the (potential) employees nowadays have the upper hand.
The first dealership I worked at the owner handed out $0.50 raises, same as every year. When I asked why it wasn’t more if I was doing such a great job, they said the company was right on money. Then the owner showed up in his new $150,000 corvette C5 that he had custom made to look like a C1 vette. Thing was ugly as hell too.
Love how my company mandated the booster shot (which I was going to eventually get anyways) but instructed everyone to use personal sick time when dealing with the the shots temporary side effects. At the very least they should have added PTO to everyone for making it a requirement.
This reminded me of my recent company townhall that proudly claimed they recorded a record annual revenue and breakthrough to new markets in sales. Then the next week during my 1-1 with manager i asked for a raise due to company profiting and my performance. He said “you did well but it isnt well enough to warrant an increment”
Smh
One of my clients made a big deal in their last BoD meeting at having over a billion in cash reserves, but they are hemorrhaging employees left and right. They have lost like a quarter of their IT staff and they had half the employees at one of their warehouses leave to work at Amazon of all places.
"Oh but we need to stay competitive with China!"
...you mean the China whose manufactured products are sitting on boats anchored off Los Angeles?
A few years back Walgreens announced $10 billion in stock buybacks. After not giving any sort of bonuses to cashiers, photo employees, pharmacy techs and the like for like the 7th year in a row, and after watering down the yearly performance reviews so as to make it nearly impossible to get any kind of a raise.
And even after the stock buybacks, the share price went down.
yup, my company is showing record profits, and even paid everyone's bonus funded at 111% of value.
This same company just had a major RIF, and let go nearly 25% of our workforce; citing Consultation Suggestions to make us better suited for the current market and more "lean"
So glad I work where I do.
Our Board just approved a budget that's somewhere over $100,000 in the negative numbers. They also approved a 6% raise for the whole staff. Biggest in 15 years.
A deficit budget? How long do you suppose before the company folds?
Happened to me as well
In 2020 my firm paused promotions and gave us a reduced bonus pool due to the pandemic
Which is ironic because we are a consulting firm and we pulled in RECORD PROFIT that year as other companies were hiring us left and right to help them manage the crisis
I used to work for Honeywell aerospace. They might still do this but they used to furlough us for a week because "the economy" and then a month or so later announce the acquisition of some other company. Every year like clockwork.
My work doesn’t even have the decency to brag to just the shareholders. They brag to us and still pay us the bare minimum
The corporate ecology over there changed some 10-15 years ago. I remember when SB could give a fack about competing with McDonald's and wanted to be its own thing. "Legendary Service" and all that. Probably one of the best companies to work for back in those days. It all changed when they decided they wanted to compete for the breakfast market. It was no longer about making a product accurately and providing an experience. It became about making a product quickly and continuously. A shame, really.
My wife quit them 4 years ago after they teased a management position to her for 3 years and it was the best thing she ever did. She wanted to be a manager so she could do right by her team by having her own store and setting proper expectations (such as having a schedule in advance, not a day before it starts, maintaining people's schedules or needs, being engaged on the floor, not hiding in the back, that sort of thing). They were probably one of the most toxic environments and its all because of the complete disconnect between Regional/District management and its work staff is seen as boxes to check when opening a store.
Literally my company. Blew away all their targets last year and are on track for a great year in 2022. Some people got 0% raises after deferring raises from 2020 due to covid, and they took away Christmas bonuses for senior staff. Then they forced everyone back into the office and a bunch of people got covid.
Love to get memos about quarterly profits and acquisitions and stock but watch my wage stagnate when I don't even scratch $40,000.
The company I work for has been insanely profitable since the beginning of covid. The success has been so great that they're about to ink a multi billion dollar acquisition deal. Meanwhile, they cut my hours and pay by 30% while dumping more responsibility on me. I'm already severally underpaid compared to the Atlanta market, but it's just insane at this point.
My company boasted a record year in 2020 according to our company newsletter. Our thanks was a root beer float party and our Christmas bonus being cut in half.
It works great as long as people accept it. And the majority of the people are hurr durr they deserve the money hurr durr we're dirt under their feet hurr durr, or words/thoughts to that effect.
I'd love it if it didn't work anymore. Clearly, it works. They're not really feeling the pain yet - they still own the politicians. In America, they own all the state legislatures, who dance like performing seals for ALEC, and ALEC and lobbyists etc basically own Washington, too.
So not sure why he'd say it doesn't work. Clearly, it works. We're still screwed. They're still taking our money hand over fist.
We got that for Xmas. Just b4 December they held a plant wide meeting, telling us about numerous quality awards from customers, orders were out the roof for the next 5 years and profits were to the moon. Xmas bonus? Well, since we can't do an Xmas dinner proper, here's a $25 gift card, go have dinner on us.
It worked before social media really took off when to find out what investors were being told you mostly had to be an investor.
People need to get together and walk out of their jobs and refuse to work until they get paid. It's the only way it's going to change. Their money making has to be interrupted
People are doing that. There have been a series of huge general strikes lately--in the U.S. at least.
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Yet, the average U.S. American will defend the insane, Sadistic U.S. Fascists slavery, masquerading as a democracy, where health insurance is used as leverage to keep people in slavery. That is the real reason, why there is no universal healthcare in the U.S.
Politicians are the reason. They get kickbacks from health insurance companies to keep them very solvent and they own stock in said companies. Making the masses buy health insurance through legislation but benefiting from that would be called insider trading I think. Since I'm not sure let's ask Martha.
Load More Replies...
I'm curious how many of you feel like I do...that many of these could be my company. 2% raises are crap. If you make a $100k, that's maybe a bit more than a $1/hr raise. In the meantime housing/food/energy/medical/inflation are all way up. I literally make less now than I did a year ago. And I don't know about your companies, but mine doesn't do Cost of Living. They claim they follow Cost of Market, but I have a hard time believing that they are bringing in people at the same wage they were 2 years ago. Honestly it feels like the only option is to just switch companies every couple of years or demand higher wages when you change position. I wish these guys would understand that there is a pretty substantial cost in getting people trained to do their jobs and their BS "saving" that they show is always a loss if you were to count the cost it takes to train a replacement. That plus the negative impact to Quality and Productivity you get until the new hire comes up to speed.
Seems like if the shareholders get more, the workers should get more. Or is that socialism?
Load More Replies... Ugh! I once worked a network at NBC. Got a measly .10 cent an hour raise....but the worse one was when a new president was hired when the network decided to rebrand. One day they required we attend a "celebration" after work hours and at this fancy bowling alley to "celebrate" something. Turns out that the big announcement was that the network was relocating to another state. Needless to say my coworkers and I were pissed that we were loosing out jobs and the network execs called it a "celebration." Such a slap in face.
Sadly this also happens in small businesses. I worked for a very small, very private yet very profitable company. I saw all the income and all the expenses, yet got the schpeal of "cant afford to pay you more than $8 an hour." My foot. Owner opened a new store during COVID.
When I worked at IKEA, the year we made record profits (somewhere in the 100s of millions) our Christmas bonus was a $2 lotto scratch card.
People need to get together and walk out of their jobs and refuse to work until they get paid. It's the only way it's going to change. Their money making has to be interrupted
People are doing that. There have been a series of huge general strikes lately--in the U.S. at least.
Load More Replies... Yet, the average U.S. American will defend the insane, Sadistic U.S. Fascists slavery, masquerading as a democracy, where health insurance is used as leverage to keep people in slavery. That is the real reason, why there is no universal healthcare in the U.S.
Politicians are the reason. They get kickbacks from health insurance companies to keep them very solvent and they own stock in said companies. Making the masses buy health insurance through legislation but benefiting from that would be called insider trading I think. Since I'm not sure let's ask Martha.
Load More Replies... I'm curious how many of you feel like I do...that many of these could be my company. 2% raises are crap. If you make a $100k, that's maybe a bit more than a $1/hr raise. In the meantime housing/food/energy/medical/inflation are all way up. I literally make less now than I did a year ago. And I don't know about your companies, but mine doesn't do Cost of Living. They claim they follow Cost of Market, but I have a hard time believing that they are bringing in people at the same wage they were 2 years ago. Honestly it feels like the only option is to just switch companies every couple of years or demand higher wages when you change position. I wish these guys would understand that there is a pretty substantial cost in getting people trained to do their jobs and their BS "saving" that they show is always a loss if you were to count the cost it takes to train a replacement. That plus the negative impact to Quality and Productivity you get until the new hire comes up to speed.
Seems like if the shareholders get more, the workers should get more. Or is that socialism?
Load More Replies... Ugh! I once worked a network at NBC. Got a measly .10 cent an hour raise....but the worse one was when a new president was hired when the network decided to rebrand. One day they required we attend a "celebration" after work hours and at this fancy bowling alley to "celebrate" something. Turns out that the big announcement was that the network was relocating to another state. Needless to say my coworkers and I were pissed that we were loosing out jobs and the network execs called it a "celebration." Such a slap in face.
Sadly this also happens in small businesses. I worked for a very small, very private yet very profitable company. I saw all the income and all the expenses, yet got the schpeal of "cant afford to pay you more than $8 an hour." My foot. Owner opened a new store during COVID.
When I worked at IKEA, the year we made record profits (somewhere in the 100s of millions) our Christmas bonus was a $2 lotto scratch card.
