Last year, the median Target worker's salary did not even keep pace
with inflation, rising less than 4% to just $25,500.
In 2021, Target spent $7.2 billion of their extra cash on stock buybacks.
That would have been enough to give every of their 450,000
employees a $16,000 raise.
>> I love the work more Perfect Union does because they dispel the notion
that inflation is caused by workers getting paid too much or
the government providing too much financial aid to ordinary people.
In fact, the main focus for more Perfect Union has been
the corporate greed that has driven up prices unnecessarily.
So let's watch more of their video and
we'll discuss what's really taking place here.
>> When a company repurchases their own shares, it does nothing for
workers but makes rich CEOs even richer by artificially inflating
the value of their stock based pay.
Last year, Target's CEO Brian Cornell made $19.8 million,
which is 775 times more than the median pay for his employees.
Target is just one example of corporate America's obscene disparity.
At the Institute for Policy Studies, we looked at 300 low wage employers and
found that the average gap between CEO and worker pay rose to 670 to 1 in 2021.
That was up from 604 to 1 the year before.
And among the companies where worker pay fell below inflation,
about two-thirds spent huge sums on stock buybacks to further enrich their CEOs.
>> Everything these corporations do maximizes profit,
ensures that the executives continue making more and more money.
And in the meantime, we get told all these Bs stories by the corporate
media by the way, about how it's our fault, ordinary Americans
are making too much money and that's what's driving up inflation.
They don't talk about the role of the Federal Reserve,
which I've talked about on the show extensively.
They don't talk about the corporate greed, the corporate stock buybacks.
The fact that you have these corporations who have no reason to raise their
prices other than just piggybacking off of the inflation narratives that
we're hearing in the press today.
It's disgusting and it feels good to know that there's a successful outlet,
successful platform, successful organizations like Perfect Union drawing
attention to the reality here.
>> Yeah, 100%.
And pointing out that there's always gonna be
this opportunistic highlighting of one variable.
There are all sorts of things that can lead to inflation.
We're in the middle of a public health crisis, a lingering economic crisis,
a supply chain crisis, all these things can contribute to that.
It's not inconceivable that increased pay or
stimulus checks could lead to some inflation.
But even if you believe that that was true.
And even if you believe that some portion of the inflation that we're currently
experiencing was due to those factors.
Wouldn't you then be even more angry about the factors that are totally optional,
that are things that are totally out of our control, acts of God and all that.
If we're already experiencing acts of God, like the COVID pandemic,
like the lingering supply chain problems,
then to on top of that have corporate price gouging should infuriate you.
But it doesn't infuriate any of these people.
They completely give a pass to all of that and try to get workers to as always
believe that their aspirations to have a better life or
to even maintain parity with inflation to not continually year after year do worse.
That's the reason that the economy is falling apart.
It's always the weakest people who are causing the most damage,
that's what we're told.
>> The New York Times just last week, had an episode of their podcast The Daily,
where they talked about inflation.
And look, I generally like that podcast.
I think some of the episodes are well done, well researched,
but some of the episodes like the inflation one total garbage.
There wasn't a single mention about the corporate greed.
In fact, there was a portion of the podcast that focused
primarily on how it would be a good thing if workers got paid less
cuz it would help control the inflation.
So I give you that context.
I think it's important.
We're critical of corporate media,
critical of some of these legacy media outlets.
I think it's kinda sleazy to just make general vague statements about them
without giving you specific examples.
And that is a good example of what we mean when we attack them in their
pro-corporate narratives.
And I don't even know if they're aware of how pro-corporate their narratives are.
But I think they're mistaken in not focusing on the corporate greed
element that's driving up prices in certain sectors of the economy and
it's not to ensure that they're able to remain profitable even
as all these other factors are increasing inflation.
Oftentimes, inflation isn't even impacting their particular business.
But again, they'll take advantage of the narratives they hear in the media to jack
up their prices anyway, final video for you.
Final video because I think this is an important component
to what Perfect Union did here, they talk about solutions.
And I wish President Joe Biden along with the Democratic Party was paying attention
to this, let's watch.
>> One recent poll shows 87% of Americans view the growing gap
between CEO and worker pay as a problem for the whole nation.
What can we do about it?
Workers can fight for equitable pay through collective bargaining.
In other countries with higher unionization rates,
CEO pay tends to be much lower than in the United States.
But policymakers need to step up as well.
On Capitol Hill, one pending bill would use tax incentives to
encourage companies to narrow their divides.
The wider the gap between a company's CEO and worker pay,
the higher their corporate tax rate.
President Biden could also take action on his own without waiting for
Congress, for instance, he could make it hard for
companies with huge pay gaps to land lucrative federal contracts.
That would have a big impact because federal contractors employ an estimated
25% of the private sector workforce.
Biden could also ban contractor CEOs from personally profiting from stock buybacks,
and he could order contractors to be neutral and union organizing drives.
>> I mean, Biden could do all of that, but
he did tell corporations to knock it off.
I remember in saying something along those lines, so good enough, right?
>> Yeah, the strategy really does seem to be just keep your head down,
hope that things improve like totally on their own.
Be able to put out a couple of little statements like you said,
implying that they should do something without actually mandating it or
even encouraging it in any way in terms of executive orders or actions.
And then hopefully things will get better.
And if they do, he'll then say, well,
clearly our pressure have the desired effect.
But he doesn't wanna anger corporations.
He doesn't wanna cut into the donations that are being made
to Democratic candidates and all that.
It's incredibly cowardly.
>> And keep in mind that a lot of these Scandinavian countries do not have
federal minimum wage.
And it's because they're represented by unions who negotiate their pay.
And that's part of the reason why you don't see such a disparity between
the pay of the company executives versus the workers of the company, right?
So, while we feel like we shouldn't hold our breath waiting for
Biden to do the right thing or for Democrats to do the right thing.
There's something you can do by organizing your workplace.
And we've seen that happen with so
many companies across the country, including Starbucks.
We've seen companies that have already unionized, to have used that union
protection to strike for better working conditions and better pay.
So there are things you can do as well outside of electoral politics.
And I want you to really take that message and
internalize it because I don't want people to feel powerless following all these
losses we've experienced with crappy lawmakers.
Who say they're gonna represent our best interests, but
then abandon us as soon as they're elected into office.