Minimum Wage vs. Executive Pay

Jerry B. Flory said:

What kind of jobs? Good jobs?
Slaves received rations of food, shelter and they made their own clothes. If they didn't work well they didn't get that stuff.

Anybody see a pattern here yet?

Yes, there's a lot more crap that people think they have to have today that they really don't.

Does a minimum wage job guarantee enough for the food, clothing and shelter that slaves got? Or is it actually worse than slavery? And you can also consider that your CEO is scheming to find a way to screw you out of what you're getting. Because, if they could, they'd pay you nothing and they prove that about themselves every time they lay off a hundred thousand Americans and move their work force to some third world country.

Your CEOs have lost their credibility. There is absolutely no reason for them to keep such huge sums to themselves while their workforce sweats atthe job and stresses how they're going to maintain food clothing and shelter at the same time. Let's compare CEOs to other leaders. In the military who earns the most respect from their companies, the general who lives in huge posh tent or a war room and fights his battles with maps and pins or the general who gets down in the mud with his men and fights alongside them?

Your CEOs do nothing but distance and alienate themselves farther from their workforces, surround themselves with security so basically they can screw anyone they want and no one can get to them.

That's the kind of shit that starts revolutions.

Click to expand...

CEOs aren't responsible for making sure you have enough money for food, shelter and clothes.

You are.

Cheers,
Rob

...the way I see it, everyone who works 40hrs a week should at minimum earn enough to rent a decent place, own a car, and meet their monthly bills. Sadly this isn't the case, for a large percentage of workers, but might be if the top earners in companies took moderate salary cuts and that money was redistributed.

As a fellow wageslave, I will say this.

Is the going rate for CEOs way too high? Absolutely. Hence those wonderful interviews when they all flew out in their private jets to beg the government for money. It was humorous.

I think it's a matter of equalizing respect. Retail workers put up with more than anyone non-retail gives us credit for. And our pay rarely, if ever, reflects the gargantuan amount of work we do, the hours we stand, the bills we can't pay, the bullying and degradation from strangers that we withstand, day in and day out.

I think the point is, we do deserve more pay, more dignity and certainly more common decency from the countless people we encounter, but because of stigma and pretention, we're often the last people to be considered for such improvements.

RobJ said:

for making sure you have enough money for food, shelter and clothes.

You are.

Cheers,
Rob

Click to expand...

Maybe they should be.
Slave owners were.
Paycheck is a symbol of those requirements.
The thing we hear all too much is

CEOs aren't responsible

Click to expand...

maestrowork said:

So if you think it's unfair, how about stop griping about it and make your a business exec? If it's easy than everyone would be doing it, right? Why not try to become a CEO? Let's see how far we'll make it...

Click to expand...

Quoted for truth. Again and again.

RobJ said:

CEOs aren't responsible for making sure you have enough money for food, shelter and clothes.

Click to expand...

True, in theory, but some CEOs and other high-level execs have damn sure made it more difficult for some people to have enough money for retirement, among other things.

caw

RobJ said:

CEOs aren't responsible for making sure you have enough money for food, shelter and clothes.

You are.

Cheers,
Rob

Click to expand...

Um yes. They are. If the workers can't live on the pay, the business will suffer for it.

If you work for company that has a dress code....they better pay you enough to meet that dress code. Or provide you clothes (uniforms anyone...any place I ever worked that had uniforms was low pay...but they gave you enough for a week).

If they don't want you die on job they better either pay you enough eat or provide food (food places generally don't pay you enough to eat, but you are given food).

If they want you to be healthy and not stink...they better pay you enough to rent a place (sadly this part is the least looked at).

Frankly most CEO's are good people (this is the optimistic person talking) and do care and do try and make sure their employees are cared for the best they can within budget. Some don't. Some are idiots with entitlement issues(I know I worked for some)....but most are good guys who try to get help for their employees if they need it.

Is pay too high...yes.

Is pay for harder labor too low...yes.

There is no easy fix.

Tirjasdyn said:

Um yes. They are.

Click to expand...

Thank goodness you cleared that up. Well then I guess all someone has to do if they don't have enough money to pay for food, shelter and clothes is go see the CEO.

I'm old fashioned. If I don't have any money for the basics I take responsibility for that and do something about it. Might sound dumb to you, but that approach has never let me down.

Cheers,
Rob

Shadow_Ferret said:

Mmm. Maybe it has to do with skill, experience, education... ?

CEOs spent years working their way up the ranks, probably have master's degrees at least. Have often invested their own money to start the company. And most CEOs work 50, 60, 70 or more hours a week to ensure their company remains viable.

A kid who sits and asks "You want fries with that" is at the bottom of the rung for a reason.

The system works perfectly and makes total sense.

Click to expand...

"Perfectly?"

"Total sense?"

This is a lot of blind faith in a system that was shown up before the eyes of the entire world during the past six months to be mortally flawed and possibly doomed to failure.



I think bb's quote is the best in the thread so far:

blacbird said:

What is well-documented is that the ratio of CEO compensation to mail room worker compensation has increased something like tenfold over the past thirty years, from 40-50 X around 1980 to 400-500X today.

And that still isn't good enough for a disturbing number of them, people like Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling and Bernie Ebbers and Dennis Kozlowski, all of whom found it justifiable to lie and cheat and steal from their companies and, by proxy, from their employees, in addition to the legal compensation they were getting.

caw

Click to expand...

40x or 50x is (I believe) already beyond reason, akin to comparing one group of workers to junkyard dogs and the other group to global ambassors. But 400x or 500x is akin to calling one group of workers ameobas and the other group demi-gods.

I kept trying to move up the chain at the retail store where I worked, but everytime I asked questions, I was removed from the potential manager list. Every time I came up with a way to increase sales, I was told that it wasn't allowed. Apparently, by not being a drone, I was never going to move up the chain. I'm not a good drone. Maybe it was college the degree.

How can you promote drones and expect that any of them will be able to run the company. I can tell you horror stories about the gross incompetence and utter stupidity from drones that were promoted. The best butt licker and the ones with the spring mounted heads who wilingly work 80 hours weeks and agree to more, this is what was promoted in company I used to work for. The highed up the chain, the less the manager seemed to know about what they were managing (like when the repeatedly mistyped the name of our Item Location Code sytem-- ILC... if you've never seen the program we used, I guess it's easy to confuse it with Aisle C... but if you've never used the computer program, how can you instruct us on how to use it better??)

I know that my former employer is not the only place were drones were valued higher and higher up the chain. Just do as your told is the unspoken company policy. I guess it keeps people out of the CEO position because no drone could be a good ship captain?

How can CEOs justify cutting wages and positions (esp part time positions that get no bennies?) while the CEOs take a bonus and extra-large paychecks? Media aside, how does this math work? Do they really think the problem is having too many minimum wage workers? It boggles my mind.

RobJ said:

CEOs aren't responsible for making sure you have enough money for food, shelter and clothes.

You are.

Cheers,
Rob

Click to expand...

I'd like to make a bet that just a partial viewing of the award-winning documentary film Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price will make you change your mind about that statement. Below are ten YouTube links to all 10 chapters of the film (each chapter is less than ten minutes). I've listed for you how to view just a few brief, select pieces which I'd like to ask you to consider viewing so that I can make my point.

Part 2 -- Start yourself off mid-way through this chapter at time-stamp 6:37, and then finish into the end of the chapter.
Part 3 -- Watch from the begining of this chapter only up through 6:27. And THIS one clip is the heart of my attempt to pursuade you, because in this segment you learn that Wal-Mart managers are instructed by Wal-Mart corporate headquarteres to have ALL the lists on hand in the store office of all local welfare and public assistance services, and to direct their employees toward those services.
Part 5 -- Watch just up until 1:25.


Teaser Trailer

Part 1 of 10 (8:44)

Part 2 of 10 (9:51)

Part 3 of 10 (9:37)

Part 4 of 10 (9:53)

Part 5 of 10 (9:44)

Part 6 of 10 (9:55)

Part 7 of 10 (10:00)

Part 8 of 10 (9:43)

Part 9 of 10 (9:56)

Part 10 of 10 (7:33)



In the end, Wal-Mart is abusing not just their employees, but also abusing the very existence of any and all local public assistance programs by deliberately structuring their employment practices to squeeze money out of those systems as an unofficial supplement to their own employment packages.



::ETA::

Two more supplemental clips to consider:

Confessions of a Wal-Mart Hit Man (10:20)

The Walton Family's lack of charity (2:54)

RobJ said:

Thank goodness you cleared that up. Well then I guess all someone has to do if they don't have enough money to pay for food, shelter and clothes is go see the CEO.

I'm old fashioned. If I don't have any money for the basics I take responsibility for that and do something about it. Might sound dumb to you, but that approach has never let me down.

Cheers,
Rob

Click to expand...

At this point, I'd like to suggest you go ahead and watch the entire movie. Because one of the things that ALWAYS happens when Wal-Mart comes to town is the local economy shrivels up and blows away with the wind. Wal-Mart then becomes the only game in town. So that $7 an hour job with sham benefits is the ONLY job anyone can get.

My point is that Wal-Mart is NOT interested in being an asset to any town in this nation. They are only interested in sucking as much money out of each town's local economy as possible without ever actually killing it. (Rather like poor Renfield from Braham Stoker's Dracula: the Three Sisters who held him prisoner for months on end and fed off of his blood never intended to either kill him or turn him. Instead they just wanted to keep him weak enough to prevent him from escaping, but alive enough to be an ongoing and viable food source.)

Plot Device said:

Wal-Mart managers are instructed by Wal-Mart corporate headquarteres to have ALL the lists on hand in the store office of all local welfare and public assistance services, and to direct their employees toward those services.



In the end, Wal-Mart is abusing not just their employees, but also abusing the very existence of any and all local public assistance programs by deliberately structuring their employment practices to squeeze money out of those systems as an unofficial supplement to their own employment packages.

Click to expand...

It should also be pointed out that on a Wal-Mart application it asks if you are currently on any of those programs, because Wal-Mart gets a county incentive for hiring the needy and then they turn around and encourage those slaves employees to cling to those programs.

But we should expect that kind of double dealing crap-handedness because it is well-documented throughout this forum that CEOs are not responsible people.

Wal Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and The Corporation which profiles the personality of the "person" entity of a corporation, since every corporation is listed as a "person," and finds them to be well within the psychopathic ranges.

Two of my favorite movies right up there with the It puts the lotion on its skin Oh wait, that's different. I'm getting my CEOs and psychopaths mixed up. It's so hard to tell the difference.

Jerry B. Flory said:

Two of my favorite movies right up there with the It puts the lotion on its skin Oh wait, that's different. I'm getting my CEOs and psychopaths mixed up. It's so hard to tell the difference.

Click to expand...

You speak more truthfully than you know. I've seen studies indicating that the behavior patterns of major aggressive bosses and criminal sociopaths toward those considered "inferiors" are pretty similar.

caw

Jerry B. Flory said:

Wal Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and The Corporation which profiles the personality of the "person" entity of a corporation, since every corporation is listed as a "person," and finds them to be well within the psychopathic ranges.

Two of my favorite movies right up there with the It puts the lotion on its skin Oh wait, that's different. I'm getting my CEOs and psychopaths mixed up. It's so hard to tell the difference.

Click to expand...

Isn't any creature that's allowed to live forever and cannot be held responsible for its actions likely to become psychopathic over time? We need to dismantle the legal structure that allows big business and big unions in collusion with big government to run roughshod over individuals. By allowing these legal fictions, we take from the people and give to the controllers of these beasts.

Plot Device said:

At this point, I'd like to suggest you go ahead and watch the entire movie. Because one of the things that ALWAYS happens when Wal-Mart comes to town is the local economy shrivels up and blows away with the wind. Wal-Mart then becomes the only game in town. So that $7 an hour job with sham benefits is the ONLY job anyone can get.

My point is that Wal-Mart is NOT interested in being an asset to any town in this nation. They are only interested in sucking as much money out of each town's local economy as possible without ever actually killing it. (Rather like poor Renfield from Braham Stoker's Dracula: the Three Sisters who held him prisoner for months on end and fed off of his blood never intended to either kill him or turn him. Instead they just wanted to keep him weak enough to prevent him from escaping, but alive enough to be an ongoing and viable food source.)

Click to expand...

If Wal-Mart is the only game in your town, go play another game in another town. Wal-Mart cannot stop you. And as far as I know they only take volunteers. If you don't like your life, change it. Or don't, I really don't mind. I learned a long time ago that I had to take responsibility for my own life.

Cheers,
Rob

a small town near where I live has a Walmart Supercenter, a Super K-Mart, a Giant Eagle (just groceries) and a small independent grocery store all within about a three mile circle.

they've all been thriving for years.

there's an independent grocery store near us. I don't shop there because a)the prices are inflated and b) I don't like the way it looks. Not to mention c)the one time we bought milk from them it went bad WAY before the expiry date, leading us to believe that they perhaps shut the freezers off at night or something to screw up two jugs of perfectly good milk.

I go where the sales are.

We have one independent grocery store left in the county. One. All the rest have been replaced by chain stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Busch's, and even varieties of CVRitegreen's drug stores, which are now appearing on every corner. We've got a few party stores (convenience stores) left here and there.

If you work at one of these retail stores, you cannot afford to live in the county. Even management doesn't make enough to live anywhere in the county. Surrounding areas are actually more expensive, unless you go north to Flint. No one wants to live in Flint. Sure, you can get a house for 3gs, but the city is worse than Detroit. (You could live in Detroit, too, but really, no one wants to. That's why the city is empty.)

Sure, sure, get an education, pull yourself up. I hear that often enough. But how? How do you afford college on a retail salary? How do you afford the time? Grants and loans are harder to come by (and if you've already run into credit problems, you're even less likely to get help paying for the education that might get you out of the crappy low paying job.) It's very difficult to juggle school and full time work. I did it-- but I can't imagine someone with kids doing what I did. It's hard.

I think as a society, we should do more to help those who are trying to raise themselves up. We defend why the people at the bottom deserve what they got. And we think it's okay for someone at the top to fleece the company and bail.

I mean, why is it that when the guy running Home Depot runs the company into the ground, he easily hops to another position with the same opportunities to fleece and bail? If I lost my company millions of dollars, I'd get a boot in the tailfeathers and I'd have a damn hard time getting another job in anything similar. Is it because I don't have a golden parachute? Because I only have a bachelor's and most of a master's degree? Or is it just that there's something wrong at the top (I'd say cronyism that the government's rich fat cats are helping out.)

Jerry B. Flory said:

Maybe they should be.
Slave owners were.
Paycheck is a symbol of those requirements.
The thing we hear all too much is

Click to expand...

I'm sorry but this is pathetic. Slaves were OWNED. They could not make any choices, their children were ripped from their arms, wives and husbands were separated and there was nothing they could do about it. They were starved, they had horrible clothes, they were whipped and beaten. Now if this is your reality you need to get the heck out!

Working for walmart is nothing like being a slave. Full stop. Stop this hyperbolic bullshit! It's pissing me off.

You want to see what life is like that's hard? Go to Africa.

If you don't like working for minimum wage, get an education and get a better job.

Oh and by the way, just because writing is enjoyable, it can still be work, hard work, I know I make money off my writing and it's a lot of work to get that pay.

You could always use your buying power and only buy from companies with Fair Trade Certification. They tend to have salary caps on executives that are relative to lower wage earning employees. (Br.Bronner's soaps, for example) But then, I think you'd probably have a hard time finding American companies that can actually meet this criteria.

Ken said:

...the way I see it, everyone who works 40hrs a week should at minimum earn enough to rent a decent place, own a car, and meet their monthly bills. Sadly this isn't the case, for a large percentage of workers, but might be if the top earners in companies took moderate salary cuts and that money was redistributed.

Click to expand...

But you'd be removing all the incentive for them to work three crappy jobs just to feed the kids. Society needs those jobs done... for next to no pay.

blacbird said:

You speak more truthfully than you know. I've seen studies indicating that the behavior patterns of major aggressive bosses and criminal sociopaths toward those considered "inferiors" are pretty similar.

caw

Click to expand...

Thread derail:

Dick Cheyney is perhaps one of the most evil spawns of modern corporate America who ever slithered into Washington power. I believe he never once believed the US Constitution was a sacred document and instead he saw it as a game to be outsmarted. His approach to government was, I believe, similar to how the dirtiest dealings are done in Corporate America: do whatever you can possibly get away with, just get the damned job done. And if any legal entanglements arise, hire a lawyer to find a way around it. As long as the paperwork is in order, we're covered.

As for his endorsement of aggressive interrogation techniques flat out torture, I believe that tactic was an extension of how he conducted business in the corporate world: bear down REALLY hard on that guy down in the marketting department, make his life MISERABLE, push him until he breaks!!!

Cheyney saw no difference at all between "putting the screws to" a figurative adversary in the corporate world, and a literal adversary in the military world. The man is morally blind and utterly unfit to wield governmental power.

And I'll also say that not all Wal-Mart's are created equal. My stepfather is a manager at one, and he absolutely loves it there. Then again, he works for a supercenter one in a small town, and they really are like a big family there. They treat him well, and he started out working there as a maintenance guy. He worked his way up. He's got a GED, no college. So yeah, he's "just" an hourly manager, but he gets paid well. My mother will have her Bachelors this December (GO MOM!), and she'll probably go back to work for the state, making pretty darn good money.

My point is that life sucked for these guys for a long time. Neither had a college degree, and in fact were both working at McDonald's when they met. I had almost nothing growing up. But they worked hard and didn't blame their employers for not paying them more than minimum wage. Instead, they did what they had to do to get either the experience or the education they needed to make more money.

My husband and I are doing the same thing, though we've never made as little as my parents did. If someone isn't paying you what you think you're worth, then you get another job or get the education you need to get better pay. It's not easy (my hubby's credit sucks, and college is NOT cheap), but unless you are disabled in some way or a full-time caretaker for someone who is, there aren't any excuses. There simply aren't.

Now, does this mean I think CEO pay is on the level? No, I don't think so, at least in cases where they've screwed up the company. They don't deserve to be compensated for that, let alone get bonuses and another job where they can do the same thing again. Clearly, they aren't qualified, and they need to find another line of work. SERIOUSLY.

But that doesn't mean other people who make less deserve more because these idiots are getting paid ridiculous amounts. That's the not the answer, either. You (generic you) aren't entitled to a job that makes you a living. You have to make yourself valuable enough that you get paid accordingly. Period.

RobJ said:

If Wal-Mart is the only game in your town, go play another game in another town. Wal-Mart cannot stop you. And as far as I know they only take volunteers. If you don't like your life, change it. Or don't, I really don't mind. I learned a long time ago that I had to take responsibility for my own life.

Cheers,
Rob

Click to expand...

Rob ... watch the movie ... please?????