Have You Seen the Bigger Piggies in Their Starched White Shirts?
I know, I know. We’re not supposed to call people names when they behave badly. But some of things I’ve learned lately would leave me speechless even if I had vocal chords. And the Beatles' Piggies song comes to mind, sans any Manson reference, because, after all, they didn't write the song for him.
This economic inequality stuff has really gotten out of hand. There’s shameless theft going on, and a time of national crisis has seemingly only made it worse.
We’re seeing “news” stories about low paying/no benefit/crap working conditions service industries not being able to find employees. So naturally, Republicans think it must be time to whack pandemic benefits. I swear those folks must really enjoy finding ways to increase people’s misery. (I’ve already put in my two cents on this topic here.)
Now it’s come out that the bigger outfits were giving their CEO’s pay raises while people were unemployed.
A report released on Tuesday found that chief executives of some of the American companies with the lowest-paid workers saw an average pay raise of 29% last year while their workers saw a 2% decrease.
Fifty one of the nation's one hundred largest low-wage employers—including Tyson Foods, Coca-Cola, Chipotle, and YUM Brands— boosted executive pay in 2020 while offering their workers few safeguards against the pandemic and resulting economic meltdown.
Average CEO compensation at these companies was $15.3 million in 2020, while median worker pay was $28,187 on average. The average CEO- worker pay ratio: 830 to 1.
How did they do this, you ask? By changing the rules of the game for those at the top.
Here are a few examples, via Common Dreams:
Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta had the largest paycheck among the rule-rigging companies. After he failed to meet the goals associated with his multi-year stock awards, the board "modified" the awards by disregarding poor 2020 financial results and changing the performance metrics. Those maneuvers inflated his total compensation to $56 million—1,953 times as much as the company's median worker pay of $28,608 in 2020.
At YUM Brands, the owner of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, CEO David Gibbs garnered positive media coverage by donating $900,000 of his salary to pay for $1,000 bonuses for restaurant general managers. But the board changed its bonus metrics to give Gibbs a special cash bonus and stock grant worth more than 2.5 times his voluntary salary cut. This largesse boosted Gibbs's total compensation to $14.6 million — 1,286 times as much as median worker pay of $11,377. The fast food giant did not offer hazard pay to these frontline employees, whose average wages are just $9.75 per hour, according to Payscale.
At Coca-Cola, none of the top executives met their bonus targets last year either, but the company board used "discretion" to give them all bonuses anyway. For CEO James Quincey, that $960,000 bonus, combined with new stock-based awards, drove his total compensation package above $18 million, over 1,600 times as much as the company's typical worker pay. In December 2020, Coca-Cola announced plans to cut about 2,200 jobs, or 17 percent of its workforce. About 1,200 of the layoffs will hit U.S. workers.
There is a solution to this sort of pocket lining in the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act, which would use tax policy to incentivize corporations to narrow their pay divides by reining in executive compensation and lifting up worker wages.
Companies with pay gaps of more that 50 to 1 between their highest-paid executive and median workers would face graduated rate increases starting at 0.5 percentage points on ratios of more than 50 to 1 and topping out at 5.0 percentage points for companies with gaps above 500 to 1.
I suppose it’s a bit much to ask for this Congress. Maybe if we ditch some Republicans something could be worked out in a couple of years.
Hang on, the news gets worse...
Some of the bigger players in the economy that did stay open were able to do so by insisting and/or threatening employees not share information about COVID-19 infections in the workplace.
Here’s Josh Eidelson at Bloomberg:
In the past few months, U.S. businesses have been on a silencing spree. Hundreds of U.S. employers across a wide range of industries have told workers not to share information about Covid-19 cases or even raise concerns about the virus, or have retaliated against workers for doing those things, according to workplace complaints filed with the NLRB and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Workers at Amazon.com, Cargill, McDonald’s, and Target say they were told to keep Covid cases quiet. The same sort of gagging has been alleged in OSHA complaints against Smithfield Foods, Urban Outfitters, and General Electric. In an email viewed by Bloomberg Businessweek, Delta Air Lines told its 25,000 flight attendants to “please refrain from notifying other crew members on your own” about any Covid symptoms or diagnoses. At Recreational Equipment Inc., an employee texted colleagues to say he’d tested positive and that “I was told not to tell anybody” and “to not post or say anything on social media.”….
...So far, companies have had little to fear from federal oversight. Trump-era NLRB rulings have expanded companies’ discretion to restrict activist workers’ speech on subjective grounds such as offensiveness. And the scant number of inspectors under OSHA’s purview—862 as of January, enough to inspect each workplace once every 165 years—has left it at a nadir. OSHA hasn’t issued any regulations to address the pandemic. It’s received more than 8,000 related health and safety complaints, while state agencies have received more than 24,000. The Labor Department says OSHA is recruiting inspectors.
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The headline for this story comes from the song "Piggies," written by George Harrison
Did you know the original recording of Piggies was missing one verse?
Everywhere there’s lots of piggies
Playing piggy pranks
You can see them on their trotters
Down at the piggy banks
Paying piggy thanks
To the pig brother
***
Ladies & gentlemen, I give you....
https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1392565196250624001?s=20
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