Nationwide, autoworkers’ average real hourly earnings has fallen 19.3% since 2008, according to research from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
September 22, 2023
Profits at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis have grown 92% from 2013 to 2022, totaling $250 billion, according to the Economic Policy Institute. During that time, the CEOs at Ford, GM and Stellantis have seen their salary jump 40%.
Michigan Advance
September 22, 2023
During the country’s 2008 economic crisis, the auto industry was at extreme risk; GM and Chrysler (now Stellantis) agreed to bankruptcy and government-supported restructuring, according to the Economic Policy Institute September 12 article, UAW-automakers negotiations pit falling wages against skyrocketing CEO pay. While this deal saved jobs throughout the auto sector, it came with steep costs to workers. Union workers agreed to a wage freeze, entry of lower-wage “tiered” workers, and other concessions affecting retiree pensions and health care benefits, the article continued. In 2009, the companies suspended contractual cost of living adjustments and have not had one since.
Texas Metro News
September 22, 2023
Profits at the Big Three collectively rose by 92 percent, and CEO compensation jumped 40 percent from 2013 to 2022, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute released last week.
Inflation has eaten into auto manufacturing workers’ average hourly wages, which dropped 19.3 percent in real dollars since 2008, the left-leaning think tank found.
The Hill
September 22, 2023
Adjusted for inflation, wages for autoworkers in the United States have fallen 19 percent since 2008, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group.
New York Times
September 22, 2023
Factoring in the nation’s 350 largest companies, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 20-to-1 in 1965, according to the Economic Policy Institute. That figure jumped to 59-to-1 in 1989 and 399-to-1 in 2021, EPI researchers said. The CEO-to-worker pay ratio for S&P 500 firms was 186-to-1 in 2022, according to executive compensation research firm Equilar.
CBS Moneywatch
September 22, 2023
Profits at the Big Three firms increased by 92 percent in the last decade and CEO pay increased by 40 percent in the same period, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Hill
September 22, 2023
Those across-the-board spending cuts reduced federal grants to states by $5.8 billion and took the biggest toll on Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, Montana and South Dakota, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Route Fifty
September 22, 2023
Along the same lines, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute reported a year ago that “CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978; CEOs were paid 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021.”
News Herald (Ohio)
September 22, 2023
Between 1979 and 2022, the inflation-adjusted annual wages of the top 1% of workers rose by 145%, while the average annual wages of the bottom 90% rose by only 16% — about a tenth as fast, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Several factors contributed to these trends, including deregulation, the decline of unions, and little change in the federal minimum wage.
CNN
September 22, 2023
The figure Sanders cited is nearly identical to a statistic from the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., liberal think tank. The organization annually calculates the ratio of pay between CEOs and workers making the average median salary. The group’s analysis isn’t confined to autoworkers.
In the institute’s most recent report, from 2021, the compensation ratio was 399-to-1. The institute looked at the 350 largest publicly owned U.S. companies by revenue, which includes two of the Big Three automakers, General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. The third of the Big Three, Stellantis N.V., a Netherlands corporation formed through a 2021 merger with Fiat Chrysler, was not in this group.
Politifact
September 22, 2023
Since 2013, profits at the Big Three have risen 92 percent, according to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. During that time period, the companies paid out nearly $66 billion in dividends and stock buybacks, $14 billion of that in this year alone.
New Republic
September 22, 2023
There’s been an effort in much of the media to suggest that the workers are being greedy. In fact, the workers made major concessions in order to help save the Big 3 companies during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. Since 2008, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), real hourly earnings for autoworkers have fallen 19.3%. If the companies were still struggling, the union’s demands might seem unreasonable. But that’s not the case.
Profits for Ford, General Motors and Stellantis have jumped by 92% over the past decade, to roughly $250 billion. According to EPI, forecasts for 2023 point to more than $32 billion in additional profits.
The Cap Times
September 22, 2023
And it’s astronomical by historical standards. According to a study of the 350 largest publicly traded U.S. firms by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, the CEO-to-Worker pay ratio was just 15-1 in 1965.
Associated Press
September 22, 2023
Video of Heidi at Politico event.
Politico
September 22, 2023
According to an analysis last year by the Economic Policy Institute, the heads of the top 350 publicly traded companies earned annual incomes that were on average 399 times greater than a typical worker in 2021, up from 59-to-1 in 1989. This means that some executives’ pay is significantly greater than 399 times their employee’s pay. In fact, the heads of 22 S&P 500 companies earn at least 1,000 times more than what their typical workers take home. (See if some of these companies are also among the companies planning the biggest mass layoffs this year.)
24/7 Wall St.
September 22, 2023
Adjusting for inflation, autoworkers have seen their average wages fall 19.3% since 2008, according to Adam Hersh, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. That’s because autoworker “concessions made following the 2008 auto industry crisis were never reinstated,” Hersh said in a recent blog post, “including a suspension of cost-of-living adjustments.”
CBS News
September 22, 2023
According to data from the Economic Policy Institute, union membership peaked in 1985, when nearly 1 in 3 U.S. workers were under a union contract compared to 2022, where only around 1 in 10 U.S. workers were part of a union.
Fox 43
September 22, 2023
Another dynamic driving the UAW’s wage asks? Skyrocketing CEO pay.
General Motors CEO Mary Barra, the highest-paid chief executive among the Big Three, made nearly $29 million in 2022. Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that this is 362 times the median GM employee’s paycheck.
NPR
September 22, 2023
Credit conditions could also spark a recession if the Fed tightens monetary policy beyond what the labor market has already sustained, said Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist at the Labor Department who’s now the president of the Economic Policy Institute.
“Right now, we’re in the sweet spot,” she said. “If we have a recession next year it will be a policy failure because of the Fed moving too fast.”
Politico Pro
September 22, 2023
Nursing assistants like her, who do everything from daily chores to physically taxing tasks, are often stretched to their limits. Eight in ten residential long-term care workers are women, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute. The industry relies on minorities and immigrants, too: Black women make up 22 percent of this industry compared with 6.5 percent of the overall workforce, and immigrant women about 13 percent compared with 7 percent. The median salary is $15.22 per hour, 25 percent lower than that of the overall workforce.
Think Global Health
September 22, 2023
David Cooper, director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning economic think tank, is in favor of the change, arguing that the policy has “significant racial and gender parity implications” because it would raise pay for a workforce that has been historically disadvantaged.
The Eater
September 22, 2023
Wage theft amounts to about $60 billion a year according to reports by the Economic Policy Institute. Despite exposés, corporations regularly rip-off low-wage workers.
Counterpunch
September 22, 2023
Nevertheless, polls continue to show an excruciatingly close race between Biden and Trump (Trump 47-Biden 46 in the late-August CNN poll; Biden 44-Trump 42 in the early September Morning Consult poll). Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, told the New York Times, “I’ve never seen this big of a disconnect between how the economy is actually doing and key polling results about what people think is going on.”
The Messenger
September 22, 2023
Autoworker take-homes have been doing even worse. Their real wages have actually been sinking over recent years. Between 2008 and July 2023, analysts at the Economic Policy Institute reported earlier this week, real average hourly earnings for U.S. auto manufacturing workers fell 19.3 percent.
Inequality.org
September 22, 2023
According to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, profits at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis increased 92% from 2013 to 2022, totaling $250 billion. Forecasts for 2023 expect more than $32 billion in additional profits.
Michigan Advance
September 22, 2023
Profits at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis almost doubled between 2013 and 2022, totaling $250 billion, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Over the past four years of the now-expired UAW contract, vehicle prices increased 30% and CEO pay increased 40% while worker pay increased 6%.
Spectrum News 1
September 22, 2023
The number of workers involved in major work stoppages hit the highest levels in decades in the years before the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly in 2018 and 2019. After subsiding during the pandemic, the number of workers who went on strike grew by 50% in 2022, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.
CNN Business
September 22, 2023
Practically speaking, flat funding represents a budget cut because of inflation, as well as an expanding payroll due to cost-of-living adjustments and merit raises, said Celine McNicholas, general counsel and director of policy and governmental affairs at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“But it’s not so much a question of just keeping the agency functioning and avoiding furloughs,” said McNicholas, who served as an NLRB official during the Obama administration. “If you want the agency to function the way the Biden administration wants—to be a bright spot for labor—then it absolutely needs a funding increase.”
Bloomberg Law
September 22, 2023