WASHINGTON—As labor and its allies battle to defeat Donald Trump, the candidate of the billionaires, and elect Kamala Harris, endorsed by the nation’s major unions, the AFL-CIO Paywatch report just issued shows why the electoral fight against billionaire power is so important.
In a horrifying example of corporate greed, Provo, Utah-based Nu Skin Cosmetics topped the AFL-CIO’s annual Paywatch report by paying its CEO last year 10,377 times what its median worker made.
That ratio is so huge, said the federation’s Secretary-Treasurer, Fred Redmond, that the worker would have to start toiling for Nu Skin from “before the invention of writing” thousands of years ago through now to equal the $5.87 million CEO Ryan Napierski took home last year in compensation.
Not only did Napierski earn a lot, but workers earned little. Nu Skin has 1.2 million “distributors” worldwide and the median pay for each “distributor” last year was $563, Paywatch noted.
Wikipedia reports Nu Skin totally bases its paychecks on commissions and 93% of its distributors did not earn a commission check in a typical month in one recent year. It also cheats both consumers and workers in other ways.
Wikipedia noted six states sued Nu Skin several years ago for misleading marketing practices. In one case, Nu Skin convinced its distributors to peddle non-existent products. Nu Skin also settled two fraudulent marketing cases with the Federal Trade Commission, paying a total of $2.5 million.
None of those Nu Skin examples of corporate greed and malfeasance were in the AFL-CIO’s report, which, using federal records, concentrated on paychecks—including huge money for stock options and buybacks—to honchos compared to what they paid their workers.
Including the stock options and buybacks, which enriched Wall Street financiers as well as corporate execs, the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 268-to-1 at Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies in 2023. “It would take more than five career lifetimes for workers to earn what CEOs receive in just one year,” the report said. It would take a lot more than that at Nu Skin.
Paywatch devoted special attention to how the Trump-GOP tax cuts of seven years ago fattened corporate CEO wallets. More than half of the tax cut’s bonanza for individuals went to company owners and CEOs, Paywatch calculated. The bottom nine-tenths of taxpayers got zip.
Redmond said workers and voters can fix that trend at the polls this fall “by electing the right people” to the presidency—Kamala Harris—and Congress. Trump has asked corporate billionaires to donate many millions of dollars to him in exchange for his support, if he is elected, for additional tax cuts for the rich.
Saw no benefit
“Ninety percent of workers did not see any benefit from the Trump tax cuts, while CEOs did,” said Redmond. “And CEO pay was boosted by $795 billion in stock buybacks” benefiting executives and Wall Street, he added.
Trump tried at his meandering “press conference” yesterday to throw a bone to underpaid tip workers by saying he would back an end to taxes on tips. When he was president, however, he pushed policies that required workers to turn their tops over to their bosses. Workers and their unions note that what tipped workers really need is guarantees for a living wage, something else Trump has always opposed.
The AFL-CIO report includes a link for readers to see if they’re registered to vote, and if not, to sign up.
“This is unsustainable,” said Redmond. “No wonder Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump.” Musk, a union hater at Tesla, SpaceX, and on big internet platforms, has broken labor law at both firms.
Interestingly enough, Musk didn’t take any money out of Tesla last year, the report says. But Musk, who used inherited wealth to jump-start his enterprises, recently received shareholder approval for a $46 billion compensation package.
Musk is one of several top executives mentioned in Paywatch who are also renowned union haters. Another is Walmart’s Doug McMillon, whose $26,968,924 in compensation—more than half in stock options—was 976 times a median Walmart worker’s pay. The median is the point where half of the group, in this case, the hundreds of thousands of Walmart workers, earn more and the other half earn less.
Another union and worker hater: Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, who flew off to Paris to see the Olympics even as his employees had to toil round the clock to get Delta flying again after a computer-Internet outage grounded the carrier’s planes for four days.
“Bastian’s total compensation increased from $9.6 million in 2022 to $32.2 million in 2023, a 256% annual increase,” the report says. “In 2022, he announced summer air travel pricing would increase 25%-30% on average, noting ‘We’ve never seen anything of that scale.’ Delta also increased its checked baggage fees by $5 in 2024, or 17%.”
Paywatch said half of Bastian’s compensation was the value of stock options, and his overall package was 336 times that of a median Delta worker.
Meanwhile, Delta hires union-busters and their lies to stop the Flight Attendants, Machinists, and Teamsters who are running a joint organizing campaign among its workers. But Bastian’s own letter to shareholders, filed with the federal government, exposes one other aspect of Delta’s low pay: High turnover. Some “28% of our frontline leaders” have served “less than one year in the role,” he admitted.
Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan’s total compensation rose from $8.8 million in 2022, when he succeeded company founder Howard Schultz, to $14.6 million in 2023. Starbucks also raised its prices for a Venti cup of coffee in some of its stores by up to 20% in those years.
And while Starbucks Workers United finally forced the coffee chain giant to the bargaining table with workers at more than 400 of its stores, it “also doubled the amount of purchases required to earn rewards under its loyalty program,” Paywatch noted.
Schultz is rabidly anti-union. The National Labor Relations Board even cited him, by name, for threatening a barista with firing because she spoke up about pay, working conditions, and the union at a company-called “listening session” in California. And Schultz baldly lied under oath to the Senate Labor Committee last year when he denied that he, or Starbucks, broke labor law.
Has not raised wages
The one thing Starbucks hasn’t raised is its workers’ pay. Median pay for a barista last year was $14,209, and Narasimhan out-earned a median worker 1,028-1. No wonder baristas are unionizing.
Surprisingly, Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy did not make the list of top earners and the firm did not make the list of outrageous compensation, despite all its labor law-breaking, rabid hiring of union-busters and a two-year battle against recognizing and bargaining with the independent Amazon Labor Union, which convincingly won an NLRB-run election at Amazon’s Staten Island JFK8 warehouse.
But while Jassy is the CEO, Jeff Bezos, the firm’s founder and former CEO and one of the world’s three richest people, wasn’t listed. He had stepped down. Last year, Yahoo Finance reported, Bezos’s net worth, virtually all in Amazon stock, increased by $7.99 million per hour, to $177 billion.
Drug company ripoffs showed up in Paywatch. “Johnson & Johnson CEO Joaquin Duato’s total compensation increased from $13.1 million in 2022 to $28.4 million in 2023, a 117% annual increase,” it reported. “Johnson & Johnson has sued to block implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare drug price negotiation program that will reduce drug prices” for consumers. “Duato earned 338 times the median yearly pay of his firm’s workers.”
In sheer total compensation, four CEOs earned more than $150 million each. Two more fell just short.
TPG Inc., a private equity—read “vulture capital”—firm founded in Fort Worth but now headquartered in San Francisco, paid CEO Jon Winkelried $198,685,926 in 2023. He earned $683 for every dollar a median worker earned. Being private equity traders, the median pay at TPG was $290,997.
Second to TPG’s Winkelried was another private equity CEO, Harvey Schwartz of the D.C.-based Carlyle Group, at $186,994,098. What was notable about Schwartz’s take-home was the location. D.C. has some of the highest median pay in the U.S., thanks to lawyers, lobbyists, and investment houses such as Carlyle. Even so, Schwartz earned 813 times a median Carlyle worker’s pay.
Other CEOs over $150 million were Hock Tan of Broadcom Inc., at $161,826,161, and Nikesh Arora of Palo Alto Networks Inc., at $151,425,203. The top-paid female CEO, Sue Naby of Coty, Inc., followed, at $149,429,486. George Mattson of Wheels Up Experience Inc. was sixth: $148,978,853.
The report lacks one major finding, and the Detroit automakers illustrate it. The Auto Workers won their Stand-Up strike last year against Ford, GM, and Stellantis/FiatChrysler. The first two are on the Paywatch list. Stellantis, headquartered in Europe, is not. It earned 88% of its revenue in the U.S.
The Detroit News, also citing federal filings earlier this year, reported CEO Carlos Taveras earned $39.491 million last year, a 56% jump from the year before—and 518 times a median Stellantis paycheck. One-third of Taveras’s compensation was a one-time “transformation incentive” bonus. Without it, he would have earned 315 times the pay of a median Stellantis worker.
Ford’s James Farley earned $26,470,033, and GM’s Mary Barra earned $27,847,405. Farley cleared 312 times as much as a median Ford worker. Barra earned 303 times what a GM worker earned.
“High pay for CEOs is bad for workers, bad for consumers, and bad for the economy,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Redmond said in conclusion. “How do you stop increasing inequality and restore balance to our economy? We need a president who will put people before profits and put workers before corporate executives. That’s why we endorsed Kamala Harris” for president.
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