>> A new report by the Institute
for Policy Studies shows that
CEOs decided to give themselves
a little bit of a pay boost
during the 2020 pandemic,
while their employees typically got
laid off or actually got pay cuts.
The study is so
important because it shows you that
CEOs are willing to literally
change the very metrics on which
their job performance is being
tracked in order to cheat and
pay themselves bonuses even though
they didn't meet the very standards
that they had Set up for
themselves and for the company.
So the report found that 51 of
the nation's 100 biggest low wage
employers, meaning that they're
known for paying their employees
low wages, including Tyson Foods,
Coca-Cola, Chipotle, and
YUM Brands use numerous tactics to
boost executive pay in 2020 while
offering their workers few safe
Guards against the pandemic and
resulting economic meltdown.
So the manipulations that they
engaged in included lowering
performance bars to help executives
meet bonus targets.
Awarding special retention bonuses,
excluding poor second quarter
results from evaluations and
replacing performance-based pay
with time-based pay or
time-based awards I should say.
Companies enlisted an army of
Independent compensation
consultants in an effort to give
all this rule rigging of
veneer of legitimacy.
So the question is just how much
of a raise did these CEOs give
themselves?
Well, it's pretty significant.
The board of Chipotle inflated
CEO Brian Niccol's total
compensation to $38 million in 2020
by tossing out the company's poor
financial results from the peak
shutdown period And
excluding COVID-related costs.
A bit of financial magic that
artificially boosted Chipotle
is operating income and
helped give him a 136% raise.
>> Okay, so let's be fair here.
>> Should we? >> Okay, should we
said the guy who's the CEO of this
company?
All right, [LAUGH] later they
talk about limiting CEOs 50 to 1
Bernie Sanders has this plan or
500 to one of their median worker.
And it's not, you don't have to do
you just would pay higher taxes if
you don't, right?
Like 50 to 1, that sounds amazing.
[LAUGH] >> I know >> You're
nowhere near.
Okay, so Look, guys,
here's the situation.
So, could it be that in a crisis
like COVID you would need to adjust
some things to be fair to people?
Sure that's certainly
possible, right?
Hey look, we were hoping to hit
these metrics but because of COVID,
we can't so
instead we're going to this right?
But if you do that you want to be
fair to everyone down the road.
>> Exactly. >> But I've met some
other executives in my life not
all of them, but some of them.
They don't view it that way.
They view it binary like you
either are an executive and
has someone they can relate to and
have compassion for ago.
I mean how are you
going to put your kids,
through private school stuff?
And that's good, okay,
nothing wrong with that,
that's positive.
But, when it comes to the other
workers, less compassion, and
less empathy, right?
And so, that's the issue here,
the dichotomy.
And it's also certainly possible
that if you worked at Disney,
and the theme parks are shut down,
yeah, there's nothing they could do
about that I get it right.
And so sometimes the employees and
management can't have the same
exact rules on applied to them
because it depends on
the circumstances.
But in this case,
when you bend every rule to make
sure the CEO gets a $38 million
when you didn't do great, right?
It's, I keep I say this every time
in these stories.
They do amazing performance like
the Netflix CEOs we talked about it
another CEO in another story.
Well they did amazing any their
average pay at Netflix is over
$200,000, have added hos pam right?
>> Yeah.
>> But when you're not doing well
and then you're like, well,
I was only going to pay you if you
did well, but now I'm going to
cheat I pay you anyway, but
I'm not going to pay the employees.
That's unfair.
>> No, but the thing that
stands out to me Jake, and
I agree with your assessment,
I think you're absolutely right.
But what stands out to me is that
it seems as though it didn't even
matter whether or not the company
was negatively hit by the pandemic
financially speaking right?
So you're either making
the money or you're not.
And even in cases where the company
suffered as a result
of the pandemic, the CEOs are like,
yeah, let's just throw out those
metrics because it's not fair, it's
not fair, the pandemic happens.
So I'm still going to
give myself a raise.
Like there's no tightening of
the belt, right?
And again, I'm going to bring up
like this whole idea of like
measuring the market,
the market decides, and everything
in capitalism is totally rational.
These executives they're making
rational decisions.
They're not going to do something
that's going to hurt their company.
Right?
Right? But obviously, in this case,
even companies that suffered
financially as a result of
the pandemic still had CEOs who
were willing to give themselves
these insane raises.
At the companies that altered their
rules to reward top executives amid
the debt deadly pandemic CEO pay
averaged $15.3 million in 2020,
up 29% from 2019.
By contrast, the report found
that median worker pay at those
companies actually fell by 2% to
an average of $28,187.
>> That's amazing guys.
The median worker pay that means
half the folks at those companies
made less than $28,187.
The average CEO is making $15
million at those same
exact companies.
And 2020 was a rough year,
that makes sense, I get it.
Okay, and employees salaries fell
by 2%, it happens, if nobody wants
it I hope nobody wants it.
And if your company is doing well,
that's not the situation you have,
so almost literally
nobody wants it, right?
Fell by 2%, okay, so
fair enough CEOs fell also by 2, or
because says, they make so
much more money they could take
an actually a bigger hit, right?
Went up 29%.
Now there's just no.
There could be a rare situation.
It's certainly possible where
you've got well the CEO
did really adjust really well and
their profits did go up.
But they're in the cruise line
business and so it couldn't etc,
could happen, but
all of these companies on average?
No there's something wrong.
>> Yeah. >> And what's wrong is
that the powerful set the rules on
their own behalf of course and
the thing that the entity that is
supposed to look out for you,
when that naturally happens is
the government,
because what is the government?
The government is us.
It's a collection of the citizens
setting the rules of our society.
But now the government's been
captured by the corporations
because we allow unlimited
financing private financing
of elections where corporations can
simply by our politicians and
they did.
So that's why you have
the results that you do