I think we as a people need to push for highest paid personnel within companies to have their pay capped as a ratio to the lowest earner (including contract workers).
I am getting quite tired of hearing CEOs and other executives receiving millions in yearly compensation at extremely high hourly rates, while low level employees are paid near minimum wage which leads to some companies having employees that rely on food stamps to work for them.
I honestly don't understand how this was ever allowed to become a thing, how can a company force the government to pay employees to work for the company… blows my mind
Anyways I am proposing a limit lets say 500x the lowest paid employee (ikr I'm being nice to the highest paid personnel , but this will actually dramatically reduce current CEO pay(&other high paid positions) (as costs rise for the labor that actually runs the business, they will be forced to cut costs where allowed and the only place will be CEO pay))
Now my proposed limit isn't final, I'm sure others could come up with more appropriate numbers. But it does force companies to pay their employees more fairly (not quite completely but aye I'm trying).
For example in 2020 Activision Blizzard, Inc. 's Robert Kotick received $154,613,318 in compensation. This would mean their lowest paid employee would have to be paid a minimum of $80.63/hr. (I don't know how much Robert Kotick worked, I used the average value of hours worked for a CEO on google (62.5, paid him 1.5x for any hours over 40/week (just like everyone else)). (this is all public info, but if mods want it removed I can remove it… just showing an example..)
Now if Activision Blizzard had to pay the janitors cleaning bathrooms 80 per hour they would shit themselves.
This would OVERNIGHT change the entire landscape of the world (assuming it was passed in all countries).
And for those CEOs and others that “Don't take a paycheck” or some other bs while their 20% stake in the company gives them billions in dividends. I propose that executives have their dividend income (from only that company) be added to their total compensation when calculating their “hourly pay”. (which basically means they cant control the company without affecting the pay of its lowest paid employees)
This also forces companies that want to increase their pay of their highest earners to also increase the pay of the lowest earner!
In conjunction with the pay caps I also suggest tying dividend payouts to company wide bonuses and have them set to a ratio . (basically if a company wants to pay out 20% of profits as a dividend it will also have to give a bonus equal to the total dividend payout amount (I'm using 1:1 ratio in this example but feel free to change it)) This prevents companies from paying everything to shareholders without giving employees a bonus as well. This bonus should also be based on hours worked in the previous year and all previous and current employees must be given the same bonus rate for hours worked regardless of position ( so if the CEO and the lowest paid employee work the same number of hours per year, they should receive the same bonus).
Note: Within the dividend-bonus ratio cap id like to note that I want bonuses to be given outside of the dividend-bonus system. (Meaning if you want to pay more than what is required in bonuses cool, but the company isn't forced to pay out more dividends because of it).
Second note: Because I know this would never pass in the US as is above there's one last requirement and I know its shitty but its like I have to include this otherwise any idea similar to this would get tossed out like nothing. The pay minimum would only apply to workers within the country that passed the law (meaning if the company hires people to work from a different country the minimums do not apply, but the bonuses do). The highest pay would be found from within the company (even if the highest paid employee works outside the country that passes the law (so that way companies don't have their highest paid employees work outside the country and get paid whatever).
Third note: I know the whole “if they aren't in my country I don't care what they make” and that is not what I'm trying to say here. I would love if it didn't matter where in the world you were, if you were just paid appropriately for your labor, but sadly I doubt that will happen in my lifetime. So that's why I worded the 2nd note that way.
Final note: There is only one thing that isn't covered in this, and that is how do we prevent companies from moving most of their labor internationally and just costing us jobs?
To that I have honestly got to say : I have no clue, I came up with this much… maybe lawmakers could figure something out (good luck).
If any edits need to get made/other things I didn't touch lmk!
For those that TLDR applies: Cap top earner pay at some multiple of the lowest paid employee (or contractor) so that pay is more evenly distributed, and standardize bonuses & dividends paid.