Compensation for the average S&P 500 CEO was 347 times what the average U.S. worker made last year, the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch reports.
1. The average compensation for an S&P 500 CEO last year was $13.1 million. In contrast, production and nonsupervisory workers earned only $37,632, on average, in 2016. The average S&P 500 CEO makes 347 times what an average U.S. rank-and-file worker makes.
2. Last year, S&P 500 CEOs got a 5.9% raise while working people struggled to make ends meet.
Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai took the top spot on the CEO pay chart, with just over $100 million.
● A county judge in Alabama struck down the state's restrictive workers' compensation law, saying that two of the law’s provisions were unconstitutional, and giving the state legislature 120 days to change the law. In 2015 ProPublica and NPR did a major story highlighting the vicious inadequacy of Alabama’s workers’ comp law.
● Republicans get a major item on their wish list: A green light for states to drug-test unemployed people.
● A fascinating look at some companies in the new American manufacturing, which the article argues is driven by “innovation, not nationalism.” A big question to ask about manufacturing is whether the jobs are any good—it’s easy to default to “manufacturing jobs good” when really, American manufacturing jobs were good in the latter half of the 20th century because they were heavily unionized. Too often we see manufacturers coming to or staying in the U.S. these days because it’s essentially become a low-wage labor market for them. Though at least one of the companies in this piece is paying decent wages plus benefits, so that’s good.
● And speaking of manufacturing, another take: Reviving manufacturing would help all of us—not just white men.
● Still more manufacturing! Trump slammed this Indiana factory on Twitter. Union leaders say he's all talk.
● Philadelphia union wins equal pay for immigrant nurses:
One of the first to speak up was Jessy Palathinkal, who had become a nurse in India in 1990. She got her U.S. nursing license when she moved here in 1995. But when she started working at Temple, her placement on the pay scale was as though those five years of nursing never happened.
She asked why. Human Resources told her the hospital didn’t count years of experience in foreign countries.
The union saw that as a violation of the contract and fought, successfully, to change it.
● The AFL-CIO has released a toolkit for resisting immigration raids and audits in the workplace.
● And here’s a brutal example of how immigration laws are used to keep workers down.
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