If McDonald's Employees Want to Get Paid Like the CEO They Must Simply Work For 1,200 Years A new AFL-CIO report sheds light on the gulf between executive and worker pay. Aug 11, 2024. https://substack.perfectunion.us/p/if-mcdonalds-employees-want-to-get?r=1izlr0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

 

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If McDonald's Employees Want to Get Paid Like the CEO They Must Simply Work For 1,200 Years

A new AFL-CIO report sheds light on the gulf between executive and worker pay.

Aug 11

 

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Workers and advocates protest outside of a Milwaukee McDonalds in 2021. Photo: Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association via Creative Commons

Workers at some of the most valuable companies in the U.S. would have to work hundreds of years — or in some cases, thousands of years — before equaling what their CEO makes in just a year, a report released this week by the AFL-CIO says.

The report from the labor federation further underlines how CEO pay and corporate profits have skyrocketed as American families have struggled with inflation. The average S&P 500 CEO made $17.7 million in 2023, according to the AFL-CIO, down from a peak of $18.3 million in 2021. 

The AFL-CIO report found that the median worker at an S&P 500 company would have had to start working in 1755, a full two decades before the start of the American Revolution, in order to make what the average CEO at once of those companies made. At companies like Lowes and Aramark, workers would have had to start working more than 500 years ago to make as much as the CEOs of those companies, according to the report, which was based on SEC filings. 

The median McDonald’s worker made less than $16,000 last year, but that same worker would have had to start working in 1212 — three years before the Magna Carta — to make as much as CEO Chris Kempczinski’s nearly $20 million in compensation last year. But even that pales in comparison to clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, where filings showed the average worker earned less than $2,500 and would have to work for more than 6,000 years to make as much as CEO Fran Horowitz did last year. 

McDonalds and Abercrombie & Fitch did return requests for comment. 

In addition to highlighting the exorbitant inequality within companies, the report found that the same companies paying those exorbitant salaries are also hiking prices on customers. At Charter Communications, which operates Spectrum’s internet and TV services, CEO Christopher Winfrey’s compensation jumped to nearly $90 million in 2023, a 470 percent increase from 2022. This year, the company hiked the price of an internet plan aimed at low-income households to nearly $25, an increase of $5. 

S&P 500 companies also repurchased nearly $800 billion of their own shares in 2023, according to the report. 

Corporate “greedflation” has come under increasing political scrutiny in recent years. During the first month of her abbreviated presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris vowed to “take on price gouging and bring down costs” and “take on corporate landlords,” as housing costs have been a key driver of inflation. 

Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who runs the biggest corporate landlord in the U.S., made nearly $120 million last year; even though the median worker at the company makes nearly $250,000 in annual compensation, it would still take them nearly 500 years to match his 2023 compensation.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, signed a massive tax cut package in 2017 that has disproportionately benefited corporations and top executives and exacerbated inequality. Wage gains for companies benefitting from the tax cut were almost wholly concentrated in the top 10 percent of earners, according to a 2022 study by economists from the Federal Reserve, University of California-Berkeley, and more. 

In January, a group led by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Reps. Barbara Lee and Rashida Tlaib introduced a bill that would raise taxes on corporations where the CEO (or top-paid employee) makes more than 50 times that of the average worker. 

“It’s disgraceful that corporations continue to rake in record profits by exploiting the labor of their workers. Working families deserve to live with human dignity,” Tlaib said in a statement at the time. “It’s time for the rich to pay their fair share.” 

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