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