by e12e on 7/23/25, 6:41 PM with 183 comments
by Jerry2 on 7/23/25, 7:57 PM
Basically, in 1919, Henry Ford sought to reinvest the Ford Motor Company’s profits into raising employee wages and expanding hiring, arguing that sharing success with workers would strengthen the economy and the company’s long-term prospects. However, minority shareholders John and Horace Dodge (who also ran their own competing auto company) sued Ford, claiming that his actions violated the fiduciary duty to maximize profits for shareholders.
The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Dodges, declaring that a corporation’s primary obligation was to serve the financial interests of its shareholders and not broader social goals or even the well-being of its employees. This decision established a legal precedent that continues to shape corporate law even today and reinforcing the doctrine of "shareholder primacy" and limiting the ability of companies to prioritize stakeholders (like workers or communities) over investor returns.
It's been downhill for employees since.
by humblebeekeeper on 7/23/25, 7:30 PM
* RTO mandates that reduce productivity AND job satisfaction
* High CEO pay outstripping worker pay
* Loss of work autonomy and space (working without an assigned desk)
* Layoffs out of the blue for successful teams
* Weakening benefits
* AI being wedged into whatever task you are working on
I don't care if it's a union, I don't care if it's a guild, I don't care if it's just a group of folks deciding to take action together, whatever. It's time we (especially us in tech) to stop acting like "got mine" and start acting like "get ours".
by baron816 on 7/23/25, 8:11 PM
One thing we absolutely don’t want to do is disincentivize companies hiring people at the lowest end of the socioeconomic ladder. If employing those people lowers how much executives are allowed to get paid, what do you think is going to happen?
by bko on 7/23/25, 7:42 PM
> The report listed Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol as making 6,666 times more than the company’s typical worker, the largest pay gap in the S&P 500. (Niccol took over the company’s helm last September. The AFL-CIO annualized his compensation, listing it as nearly $98 million, compared to the typical Starbucks worker’s pay of less than $15,000.)
But what happened after he was announced? The stock jumped nearly 25%, resulting in an increase market cap of 27.2 billion [0].
So the $98m per year compensation is a great bargain for Starbucks and all their shareholders. This at least suggests that CEOs are very important (or investors are stupid?). But the stock price today is about the same level post announcement, so the value of his leadership mostly matched expectations for now.
It would be great if the article had some of this context and nuance rather than a press release from the AFL-CIO.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2024/08/13/why-starb...
by vaneri2007 on 7/23/25, 7:24 PM
by Workaccount2 on 7/23/25, 7:35 PM
To put it plainly - not paying the CEO wouldn't free up any meaningful amount of more money to pay the workers.
by Kapura on 7/23/25, 7:53 PM
by shkkmo on 7/23/25, 7:48 PM
If you're gonna make up a headline, don't make up one that is factually false.
by mc32 on 7/23/25, 7:19 PM
Screw it, tax them progressively for every multiplier above the average Jack and Jill’s pay —with adjustments for company size and whatnot.
by reliabilityguy on 7/23/25, 7:36 PM
by tschellenbach on 7/23/25, 7:42 PM
by msgodel on 7/24/25, 3:14 PM
by thrance on 7/23/25, 7:51 PM
by cyanydeez on 7/23/25, 7:54 PM
by rimbo789 on 7/23/25, 8:24 PM
by charlie0 on 7/23/25, 8:04 PM
by fredfoobar on 7/23/25, 7:32 PM
by SirMaster on 7/23/25, 9:23 PM
by declan_roberts on 7/23/25, 8:32 PM
Your employer can at any time replace you with an H1b who MUST work at the company to even stay in the country.
As soon as we can reform immigration we are going to see much higher software salaries.
by red-iron-pine on 7/24/25, 3:56 PM
by SideQuark on 7/23/25, 8:41 PM
There are 120,053,000 age workers with median weekly income of $1,159 = $60,258 annual income [2] (and this includes part time, people in college, semi-retired, many people who have had high incomes in the past or will in the future).
A story about a 4.3x of CEO to worker pay, which is the actual stats of CEO to worker, doesn't generate enough outrage.
Comparing the top 500 (ish) of them to all workers is simply bad analysis designed to rile up people.
Surely people here would call out the dishonesty of comparing the top 500 wage worker salaries (many millions/year each) vs all the CEOs (258k) as dishonest. It's funny seeing how many people eat this equally dishonest comparison up as indicative of all CEOs and companies...
As to all the theories as to this or that law being some culprit, or some evil intentions, note the pay of the top performers in nearly every category, from musician, to athlete, to lawyer, to top 500 CEO, to even employee, have seen pretty much the same growth over the same time. It's nearly impossible all these are driven by something as specific as a labor law, a union change, a stock market or money format change. It's almost a certainty these are all driven by an excess of accrued capital in the US (and other markets) allowing those paying these incomes to pay for what they see as talent, whether is a huge rise in middle class disposable income, a larger share of US money available for retirement accounts, etc. Many years ago chasing down this exact set of ideas revealed a ton of econ papers reaching the same conclusions....
In short, high (someone else) pay rarely is money taken from the poor, and in more cases the poor and middle get higher wages as the top get higher wages simply by econ effects like the Baumol effect. This is the effect that as some jobs pay more, it attracts more people, so for society to get older jobs done, they must now also pay more, even if productivity in the latter jobs have not increased. It's why the lowest labor in the US pays many, many fold over what you'd get for the same output in most of the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
Just some thoughts....
[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes111011.htm [2] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm
by jstummbillig on 7/23/25, 8:24 PM