FTSE 100 chief executives 'earn average salary within 3 days'

[ElizabethofYork]

Indeed - although arguably being a warehouse monkey is so poorly paid and dangerous anyway it's probably better off being done by robots.

Thanks. I'll tell my husband that when he gets made redundant.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

There aren't many jobs that aren't at risk of redundancy through automation/AI. Progress is painful for the people involved, always has been.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

"An April 2013 study by Bloomberg finds that large public company CEOs were paid an average of 204 times the compensation of rank-and-file workers in their industries. By comparison, it is estimated that the average CEO was paid about 20 times the typical worker’s pay in the 1950s, with that multiple rising to 42-to-1 in 1980, and to 120-to-1 in 2000".

In the US I suppose.

Wage ratio - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

McDonald's has a pay ratio of 3,101:1

The Mondragon Coop has one of 5:1


As a bloated capitalist employer I can only dream of 5:1!

 

[andysays]

Indeed - although arguably being a warehouse monkey is so poorly paid and dangerous anyway it's probably better off being done by robots.

So in this example the CEO who makes people redundant is actually doing it for their own good...

 

[andysays]

There aren't many jobs that aren't at risk of redundancy through automation/AI. Progress is painful for the people involved, always has been.

Which makes your earlier attempt at defending CEO's ridiculous pay levels even more nonsensical.

What counts as 'progress' for the business and its CEO is anything but for those made redundant.

 

[klang]

Progress is painful for the people involved, always has been.

It's painful for the people worrying about their very existence. It doesn't have to be that way though.

 

[klang]

So in this example the CEO who makes people redundant is actually doing it for their own good...

we have to be grateful for scraps.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

So in this example the CEO who makes people redundant is actually doing it for their own good...

How did you work that one out?

 

[Buddy Bradley]

It's painful for the people worrying about their very existence. It doesn't have to be that way though.

I don't see how you're ever going to avoid people being put out of work by change in how things are done. Do you want to keep coal mining going just to avoid miners losing their jobs?

 

[klang]

I don't see how you're ever going to avoid people being put out of work by change in how things are done. Do you want to keep coal mining going just to avoid miners losing their jobs?

No but rather than 'getting rid' there should be an incentive to modernise / update. Miners for example are a very big work force that could be shifted to sustainable energy.
Progress will happen and things have to move on, but it should be for the benefit for everybody. If the labour market and the responsibilities of CEOs will have to be re-assessed then it's high time to do so.
The last year really should have taught us that current employment structures are not sustainable, never mind in times of crisis.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I don't see how you're ever going to avoid people being put out of work by change in how things are done. Do you want to keep coal mining going just to avoid miners losing their jobs?

Buddy is the Joseph Schumpter of U75. A latter day advocate of ‘creative destruction’. A world in which hard working CEO’s ‘steer things’ to keep people in employment, where the rhythm of the market is as natural as breathing and where gleeful warehouse workers doff their caps in appreciation at being made unemployed and freed from their menial labour by their wily and benevolent bosses.

It’s a worldview where the choices are a simple and binary. A choice between keeping coal mines going or ‘progress’.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

No but rather than 'getting rid' there should be an incentive to modernise / update. Miners for example are a very big work force that could be shifted to sustainable energy.
Progress will happen and things have to move on, but it should be for the benefit for everybody. If the labour market and the responsibilities of CEOs will have to be re-assessed then it's high time to do so.
The last year really should have taught us that current employment structures are not sustainable, never mind in times of crisis.

Yup.There is an extensive literature on just transition - and a growing number of innovative initiatives, in the Ruhr especially, of how it can work in practise. But you are wasting your time with Buddy. In the space of two pages he’s gone from CEO’s managing the economy to keep people in employment to espousing the wisdom of their sacking of warehouse workers and closure of pits. All over the shop,

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Buddy is the Joseph Schumpter of U75. A latter day advocate of ‘creative destruction’. A world in which hard working CEO’s ‘steer things’ to keep people in employment, where the rhythm of the market is as natural as breathing and where gleeful warehouse workers doff their caps in appreciation at being made unemployed and freed from their menial labour by their wily and benevolent bosses.

It’s a worldview where the choices are a simple and binary. A choice between keeping coal mines going or ‘progress’.

It's amazing the points you can make when you put words in other people's mouths, isn't it?

 

[Argonia]

Funnily enough last night I had a dream where I posted a thread on Britain being an Apartheid state of haves and have nots.

 

[platinumsage]

No but rather than 'getting rid' there should be an incentive to modernise / update. Miners for example are a very big work force that could be shifted to sustainable energy.
Progress will happen and things have to move on, but it should be for the benefit for everybody. If the labour market and the responsibilities of CEOs will have to be re-assessed then it's high time to do so.
The last year really should have taught us that current employment structures are not sustainable, never mind in times of crisis.

Solar and wind tech wasn't mature enough to employ a significant number of ex-miners in the 80s. I suppose in hindsight Thatcher should have got them to build loads of nuclear power stations to give us plentiful low-carbon leccy to tide us over.

 

[redsquirrel]

Indeed - although arguably being a warehouse monkey is so poorly paid and dangerous anyway it's probably better off being done by robots.

"Warehouse monkey" lovely.

There aren't many jobs that aren't at risk of redundancy through automation/AI. Progress is painful for the people involved, always has been.

"Progress", who could be against progress, only luddites of course.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

"Progress", who could be against progress, only luddites of course.

You're opposed to life getting easier? We work far too hard as it is, I'd welcome more widespread automation if it means more free time for people.

 

[Argonia]

By now in human history we should have replaced machines with labour and should all be enjoying perpetual retirement.

 

[redsquirrel]

Is that what your "progress" has meant? That people have more free time? Not in Europe and the US where working hours have been steadily increasing since the 80s.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

I never said progress in the past has led to more free time; capitalism has somehow always managed to create more stuff that needed doing by the working class. But if technology has advanced now to a point where it can replace much of what we currently still do manually, I hope that pattern starts to move in the opposite direction.

 

[platinumsage]

Is that what your "progress" has meant? That people have more free time? Not in Europe and the US where working hours have been steadily increasing since the 80s.

Freed from the drudgery of fitting car engines, people can now cycle around delivering Burgerking meals.

 

[redsquirrel]

I never said progress in the past has led to more free time; capitalism has somehow always managed to create more stuff that needed doing by the working class. But if technology has advanced now to a point where it can replace much of what we currently still do manually, I hope that pattern starts to move in the opposite direction.

This time it will magically be different, no doubt those lovely visionary CEOs of yours will make sure it is. Fucking laughable

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Freed from the drudgery of fitting car engines, people can now cycle around delivering Burgerking meals.

Is that what they mean by Fully Automated Luxury Communism?

 

[Smokeandsteam]

It's amazing the points you can make when you put words in other people's mouths, isn't it?

Don't need to put words in your trap Buddy. You’ve got the shovel out and dug your own hole

 

[Sprocket.]

Don't need to put words in your trap Buddy. You’ve got the shovel out and dug your own hole

He could get a robot to do that for him.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Don't need to put words in your trap Buddy. You’ve got the shovel out and dug your own hole

Yeah - odd that you're not actually quoting me saying anything of the sort, though.

 

[andysays]

How much should someone be paid for steering a company in such a way that it can keep employing thousands of other people, then?

Just to return to this post now that I'm home from work and can address it better.

I don't know the figures, but I would be prepared to bet a significant sum that in the case of the CEOs of FTSE 100 chief executives, the majority of them will be running companies which have actually shed many thousands from their workforce over the past few decades, the very period when their income has gone from 50 to 120 times that of the typical UK worker.

High Pay Centre director Luke Hildyard said chief executive pay is about 120 times that of the typical UK worker, up significantly from two decades ago. "Estimates suggest it was around 50 times at the turn of the millennium or 20 times in the early 1980s," he said.

And this is not some sort of strange coincidence, the supposed "success" of many FTSE 100 companies over that period, reflected in the rising levels of chief executive pay, has been built on "merger", "restructure", relocation to cheaper parts of the world and outsourcing and casualisation of many aspects of work, all combining to an economy where the workforce is exploited even more ruthlessly.

To suggest that CEOs in this situation are somehow actively steering the company so it can continue to employ people is so ridiculous it beggars belief that you could suggest it.

 

[8ball]

There aren't many jobs that aren't at risk of redundancy through automation/AI. Progress is painful for the people involved, always has been.

Lawyers and middle management... gonna be sad to see them go.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Lawyers and middle management... gonna be sad to see them go.

I don't think we're that far from being able to train an AI to litigate. It's mostly based on being able to cite historical precedent anyway.

 

[8ball]

I don't think we're that far from being able to train an AI to litigate. It's mostly based on being able to cite historical precedent anyway.

A lawyer I know is already talking about her job becoming more and more about signing things that have come out of a computer.