Auto Industry
Wage Demands of U.S. Auto Workers
Rally by autoworkers in Kokomo, Indiana, week of September
17-23, as they prepare for rotating
strike actions.
U.S. autoworkers are not flinching in their demands for a 40 per cent wage increase to match the increase in salaries the owners of the big three automakers have given themselves in the last few years while the wages of autoworkers have systematically declined.
Autoworkers in the U.S. point out that since 2003, they have seen their average hourly wage decline by 30 per cent. Meanwhile, over the past decade, the Big Three automakers have raked in more than $250 billion in profits and rewarded shareholders with tens of billions of dollars in stock buybacks and dividend payouts.
General Motors CEO Mary Barra
earned $29 million in 2022,
which is 362 times what her company's median employee makes. At
Stellantis (formerly known as Fiat Chrysler), CEO Carlos Tavares
made
$24.8 million or 365 times the salary of the average employee.
Ford CEO
Jim Farley took in $21 million,
which is at least 281 times more than the median worker.[1]
Ford and General Motors have proposed wage increases of 20 per cent and Stellantis 21 per cent over the course of a four-year contract. This is well below the demand of the United Auto Workers (UAW) for a 36 per cent wage increase to make up for years of falling autoworker pay amid rising corporate profits and surging executive compensation.
The Economic Policy Institute reports that in 2021 CEOs in the U.S. raked in 399 times as much as their employees, up from a ratio of 59-to-1 in 1989. CNN repeats the argument of the CEOs who point out that most of their pay is tied to company performance, which makes calculating the amount they take home "complicated." That's all the more motivation for "keeping costs – including workers' pay – low," CNN notes.
When Stellantis announced its offer of a 21 per cent pay increase, its spokesperson said: "Our goal is to secure a sustainable future that provides all our UAW-represented employees with an opportunity to thrive in a company that will be competitive during the automotive industry's historic transformation." United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain rejected the 21 per cent pay increase from Stellantis. "This is about working class people standing up to get their share of economic justice and social justice after being left behind for decades," he told MSNBC's The Sunday Show. Some 13,000 Stellantis autoworkers continue picketing outside three plants in Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio, as of September 22. "If we don't get better offers, and we don't get down to taking care of the members' needs, then we're going to amp this thing up even more," Fain told CBS.
The transfer of wealth from hundreds of millions of people worldwide to a tiny minority of individuals is humongous. In 1970, an average CEO had income 20 times that of a middle level worker's median income. Now it has become 300 times. Income tax on rich individuals was 70 per cent in 1970 and now its 37 per cent. The U.S. federal government collected 12 per cent of its taxes from corporations in 1970, now it collects six per cent. Real wages of workers have become flat.
Since 1978, the CEO compensation among the 300 biggest companies in the U.S. has gone up 1,460 per cent, while the typical worker's pay grew by just 18 per cent (both adjusted for inflation). In the same period, those CEOs' compensation grew 37 per cent faster than stock market growth.
This article was published in
Number 53 - September
25, 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2023/Articles/WO10533.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca