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Me fighting corporate greed

seaboy4hire

By seaboy4hire
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purplekow Grand Master

+ purplekow

Posted
Posted

I guessed 500. I figured most grocer workers make little more than minimum wage and many of them work part time. So I went with the average worker making $8000 a year and the average CEO $4 million.

Sad part is, even if you fired the CEO and gave his salary evenly to the workers, they would still not be close to earning enough to keep them above the poverty line. Take away his perquisites and the company excesses and it still unlikely that those doing most of the work would make a livable wage.

deej Grand Master

+ deej

Posted
Posted

You go!

 

I'm going to forward this to a local reporter. Last I heard, negotiations were NOT going well and the union had already voted to approve a strike if necessary.

 

Nicely done!

seaboy4hire Mentor

seaboy4hire

Posted
  • Author
Posted

The grocers and unions have approved contracts in Toledo, Detroit, Dallas and tentatively socal. We have two more meetings here in Seattle next week. My guess is that these two meetings here in Seattle are going to be all nighters and will have a tentative agreement by early Aug.

 

Hugs,

Greg

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seaboy4hire Mentor

seaboy4hire

Posted
  • Author
Posted

>I guessed 500. I figured most grocer workers make little

>more than minimum wage and many of them work part time. So I

>went with the average worker making $8000 a year and the

>average CEO $4 million.

>Sad part is, even if you fired the CEO and gave his salary

>evenly to the workers, they would still not be close to

>earning enough to keep them above the poverty line. Take away

>his perquisites and the company excesses and it still unlikely

>that those doing most of the work would make a livable wage.

>

>

 

Mr. Cow you are very right. Even cutting the ceo's pay and perks wouldn't do much for the workers pay but I think is what the union is getting at is that these ceo's (across the board not just in grocery) are crazy. While the ceo's are living it up not hurting many workers are barely getting by. There are quite a few people in my store alone that rely on section 8 housing, food stamps and other government programs to barely get by.

 

Hugs,

Greg

[email protected]

http://seaboy4hire.tripod.com New page for reviews http://www.daddysreviews.com/newest.php?who=greg_seattle Los Angeles June 28, 2007 One day only!CHICAGO June 29-July 2, 2007

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Guest zipperzone

Guest zipperzone

Posted
Posted

I agree that every worker should get a living wage.

 

Walmart comes to mind. Especially when Fortune magazine publishes the list of the 25 richest billionaires, three Walton family members are nos. 15, 16 & 17, with around 15 billion each. That's just sick.

bigjoey Grand Master

+ bigjoey

Posted
Posted

i am not sure why business always gets hit on for these types of things. the "wage gap" shows up in all fields. take sports. national public radio had a story a couple of weeks ago where the players in baseballs minor leagues and farm clubs get paid so little they share rooms on the road and often live as old fashioned boarders in peoples homes in their home town. they travel on long bus rides and have to watch what they eat so as not to go over budget. all this while in the major leagues the annual average salary approaches a million dollars with many players earning multi-millions per year. a news report had david beckham's 5 year possible earnings at over $200 million dollars which puts most business CEO's to shame. the people at the top in any field earn like these CEO's and those at the bottom earn like the clerks.

 

the same story can be found in the entertainment industry with the few on top making multi-millions while those at the bottom earning like grocery clerks.

 

this is not new. when it was pointed out to babe ruth that he was making more than the president of the united states (hoover at that time), he replied it was justified as ruth was having a better year.

 

i understand the protest against the grocery CEO's but why should they have the responsibilities they do and work hard and get paid less than a sports figure or movie star or recording artist or an artist, or a trial lawyer, etc? if you think about it, some race horses get paid more for a years worth of sperm than a large corporate CEO!

 

i do not want to sound like a right-wing nut case but where are the protests against the high paid sports figures and movie stars, etc?

SteveStacks Rookie

SteveStacks

Posted
Posted

You're absolutely right.

There should be protests against unjustified wage discrepancies in any field, whether it's business or entertainment or sports.

Injustice is injustice.

Hopefully people will continue to take up that cause just as they are facing up to unfair business interests...

 

It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect people to be paid roughly in proportion to what they are actually contributing to society or the amount of work they are doing....rather than as much as they can get away with through nepotism and trickery.

Good job Greg!

bigjoey Grand Master

+ bigjoey

Posted
Posted

i agree that people should be paid roughly in proportion to what they are actually contributing to society or the amount of work they are doing. the question is who decides what these high payers get paid. the marketplace decides and pays the CEO's, sports figures and performers what they get.

 

barbra streisand is currently touring europe and in one or two nights makes more than most entire families will make in a lifetime. no one is forced to go to her concerts and pay what i understand are high ticket prices. the market at the ticket price is filling the venues and leaving no empty seats. the marketplace is determining that barbra streisand gets millions. in the same way, the market place determines the pay of the top CEO's. a board of directors goes out and hires these people the same way a sports team goes out and hires players; if a company's board decides a man is worth multi-millions then the marketplace is working to determine the CEO's pay the same way a sports team can decide to pay a beckham multi-millions. neither the CEO or the sports player is forcing someone to pay them multi-millions.

 

i am not sure where "trickery" or nepotism enters the picture. zippertone mentioned the forbes list of the country's richest people(there is a difference between wealth and income but for argument's sake assume a corolation). about two thirds of the list is self made people like bill gates, michael dell, warren buffet, mayor bloomberg; "old family" names are a very small part of the list. even the walton family is "new" money and thirty years ago sam did not make the list at all. here in kansas city, the richest man (by a huge margin) is the man who founded GARMIN (the GPS company); in a couple of decades he went from nowhere to the top of the pile; his money is so new that the ink is still wet on the dollar bills! yes, there are wealthy people who were part of the lucky sperm club; rarely are those people corporate CEO's as if a corporate CEO is not good, the cprporation will go downhill very fast the same way a sports team would go downhill if it hired "family" for players and they did not perform well.

 

the forbes list is a great example of how the united states is a land of opportunity where society is not "frozen" into a strict class structure. if you read the stories of the names on the forbes list, this will become evident. i do not begrudge barbra streisand her millions or beckham his millions or the successful CEO his millions. the marketplace has given them this money. it is the opportunity that this country shows that has caused millions of immigrants to come here.

 

"unjustified" wage discrepancies? "injustice"? you tell people not to go to barbra's concerts or beckham's games or to buy a company's products or services and the earnings of those people will fall. until then, the marketplace is setting their pay.

 

as for people being paid for the amount of work the are doing, because of union contracts, the term "feather beding" came into being where people were paid for little or no work. the famous example is the firemen on trains being paid to shovel non-existant coal on non-coal trains; they were paid for just sitting. auto workers are paid if they are working or not; no cars to be made and you get paid anyway. unions can make it almost impossible to fire poor performers and reward good ones (think school teachers). no, i am not against unions but they do distort what people get paid and in some cases union members are not paid roughly in proportion to what they are contributing or the amount of work done (your yardstick); by your own measurement, unions can cause "unjustified" wage discrepancies and "injustice" in these feather beding cases. by and large, unions have been good for workers and society as a whole but they have created some bad side effects as well.

 

the marketplace's workings do leave some people in need of help; this is the role of NGO's and government as well as the actions of individuals as volunteers. people "left behind" do need help and any decent society needs to give that help. however, that is a separate issue from differences in income.

SteveStacks Rookie

SteveStacks

Posted
Posted

Hey BigJoey! I'm not sure we really disagree. I am probably just not articulating myself well.

 

My argument isn't that people who make lots of money are inherently bad. (Some of my best friends are wealthy *chortle*)

I am just arguing that the amount of money a person earns should in some way be tied to their contribution to society or at least the value of the goods or services they are offering (as you said, "the market")... and that there's something wrong with the fact that in the many cases it's not.

 

For example, the money Streisand makes on a concert is roughly equivalent to the number of tickets she sells.

If she is entertaining, she sells more tickets at her next concert, and as long as she continues to perform a service that people want, her ticket sales will stay high, or even go up.

Hence her earnings are in some way tied directly to the market and even arguably to her contribution to society.

 

On the other hand, neither shareholders nor customers directly vote CEOs into office the same way they vote with their ticket purchases.

As you mentioned, the appointment of CEOs is instead done by boards of directors. If the board is honestly elected, they will represent the interests of shareholders and the connection between market forces and pay still remains.

 

It does happen however that boards of directors are sometimes stacked (this is part of where the nepotism and/or "trickery" i mentioned comes in.)

When that "you help me get nominated for/appointed to this board, i'll help you get nominated/appointed to the one i'm on" stuff happens, and the options that shareholders have are limited, (or eliminated) that screws up the connection between the market and pay. Hence we have crookedly elected boards giving CEOs millions of dollars in "severance pay" when the CEO is basically being fired for poor management etc.

 

In many cases, CEOs (and entertainers) work very hard for their money.

But in others (and the corporate scandals fill the papers....Enron, Tyco International, Peregrine Systems, WorldCom....) CEOs are taking advantage of corporate structure to erase not only the connection between their social contribution and their pay, but the connection between market forces and their pay.

 

The corner office doesn't have a monopoly on corruption and you're absolutely right that in some cases union jobs are corrupt as well... My point is just that corruption should be fought everywhere it appears...

 

As far as the question of the market goes as well...i think it's only fair to point out too that the connection between "market value" and "social value" can be a tenuous one at best and raises a whole other argument.

 

For example, the fact that factors such as the "estimated earnings" from the child sex slave trade are often considered in evaluations of GDP but childcare that doesn't involve an exchange of cash for services rendered (since it's provided directly by the mother or relatives of the children) is not, speaks volumes about the dangers of relying on the values set by the market as a sole indicator of a given acts value in terms of real social contribution.

The Exxon Valdez was one of the most "profitable ships" in history in pure economic terms, thanks to the amount of economic activity it generated (in clean up costs etc.) but it would be hard to argue that its social value was equivalent to its economic effects/value.

 

No one should be demonized simply for being successful, but those who exploit others to succeed or who cheat or lie should never be rewarded as far as i'm concerned.

 

I really enjoy your posts...you're a lot of fun to discuss things with! thanks for exchanging ideas with me....*grin*

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