Strike at Deere plants in the US, more supply chain shortage to come

[sea2summit]

always 2 sides to the story

Concur, I'd even argue there are four in these cases. Employees, company, customer, future market.....five if you count the union, and six if you count government regulation etc.

 

[plowhog]

You can be a line worker or a CEO. Or go into business for yourself and be both.

I don't understand complaints about CEO pay, except that it is a common class warfare argument ginned up by some. Quite simply, if you want CEO pay, almost anyone can become a CEO. There are two typical routes.

You can spend/invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in yourself to get a college education and MBA (masters in business administration.) That might take 6 years of work. Then work 10-20 years as a "C" level executive and you then have a shot to become a CEO.

Or, invest your entire life savings into a small business venture. That makes you an instant CEO. But remember, 9 of out 10 who try that route lose their entire investment.

The surgeon who is about to open you up on the operating table probably makes a ton more money than you do. But are you going to resent that in favor of a lower compensated surgeon? Or do you want the highest paid and most respected professional to be the one plunging the knife into you?

 

[kenmac]

I don't understand complaints about CEO pay, except that it is a common class warfare argument ginned up by some. Quite simply, if you want CEO pay, almost anyone can become a CEO. There are two typical routes.

You can spend/invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in yourself to get a college education and MBA (masters in business administration.) That might take 6 years of work. Then work 10-20 years as a "C" level executive and you then have a shot to become a CEO.

Or, invest your entire life savings into a small business venture. That makes you an instant CEO. But remember, 9 of out 10 who try that route lose their entire investment.

The surgeon who is about to open you up on the operating table probably makes a ton more money than you do. But are you going to resent that in favor of a lower compensated surgeon? Or do you want the highest paid and most respected professional to be the one plunging the knife into you?

What good is a CEO without employees ?
If you have employees that do crappy work, turns out less product, etc, the CEO gets canned !
Good employees is what helps that CEO get their salary, and their job !

 

[Torvy]

You answered your own question, to a point. The CEO gets canned when employees fail to do their work. This is especially true in a union environment where change is difficult and seniority rules over performance. In a fair situation, it would be the employees getting canned when they don't perform.

Good leaders make a huge difference in their businesses. I have been a front line employee in both non-union and union shops. I have also been in management. Many, if not most, managers have worked in a front line job at some point. Exceedingly rare to find a union employee who has real management experience. That whole 'walk a mile in my shoes bit'. A good CEO is gold for employees, stockholders, and customers.

That being said, technically I am a union employee now, but Texas calls them Teacher Associations. The union and the union mentality is bad for kids and bad for teachers. I left ATPE for ITT because of similar issues above about politics not aligning...the union does not hold a vote to decide who or what they advocate...they just tell the rank and file how they are spending their dues and how the rank and file should think.

 

[mo1]

I don't understand complaints about CEO pay, except that it is a common class warfare argument ginned up by some. Quite simply, if you want CEO pay, almost anyone can become a CEO. There are two typical routes.

You can spend/invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in yourself to get a college education and MBA (masters in business administration.) That might take 6 years of work. Then work 10-20 years as a "C" level executive and you then have a shot to become a CEO.

Or, invest your entire life savings into a small business venture. That makes you an instant CEO. But remember, 9 of out 10 who try that route lose their entire investment.

The surgeon who is about to open you up on the operating table probably makes a ton more money than you do. But are you going to resent that in favor of a lower compensated surgeon? Or do you want the highest paid and most respected professional to be the one plunging the knife into you?

Whether or not you can actually end up running your own business in your field depends on your field, namely how heavy government regulation is in your field. Relatively lightly regulated fields such as retail and restaurants are relatively easy to run your own business and a lot of people do it. On the other end of the spectrum, if you work for a telco, natural gas company, or electric utility, it is absolutely illegal to start your own company as your employer was granted a legal monopoly over an area by a locality or state. Other fields fall just short of being completely illegal but the hoops to jump through are so expensive and difficult that it effectively keeps any new entrants out of the market.

For example, if you work for a hospital, don't like it, and want to break off and start your own, it is now illegal to do so under federal law if you are a physician. If you are not, then you aren't totally barred from attempting to beg the existing hospitals that staff the state's "certificate of need" board to grant you a license to operate a hospital. If they say no, you're out of luck. If you manage to convince them to grant you one, you now have to jump through yet more very expensive regulatory hoops with the state and the feds with everything from building construction, staffing, record keeping, Medicare/Medicaid compliance, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. And then you have to deal with the fact the feds set reimbursement levels (at a significant loss, of course) and the only way you could even try to stay open is to try to convince one of a handful of multibillion dollar private insurance companies to pay many times what the feds do for the small percentage of private-pay patients that come into a hospital to cover the losses. That is why you see no new entrants into that field. You do see a lot of (generally smaller) hospitals and the companies that run them go out of business or sell out, but anything new is simply another facility owned by a giant conglomerate.

The commentary about "rising up through the ranks" to become a corporate executive is largely no longer true. It used to be, but with all of the consolidation, it isn't any more. You not only need an MBA, you need to have an "in" with somebody to actually get hired on in the first place. Often that involves being related to or friends with the right people.

I find your commentary about surgeons to be funny. Physician salaries are effectively set by a governmental formula based on how the government determines the "work output" of the physician. This gives a "fair market value" of the physician and paying them more than that for whatever reason is illegal under the Stark law as it's an "illegal kickback." There is a little leeway when a physician first starts out but not very much, and once they are there a year or two, they are fully subject to the Stark cap. About the only reason one physician of the same specialty will be paid less than another in the same area is if they see fewer patients/do fewer procedures/check fewer boxes in the computer or are clueless and accept a terrible offer below the Stark cap.

 

[rScotty]

.....many members of the union that he is president of have been told that he will do nothing for them to retain their jobs in the midst of a battle with the federal government's illegal vaccine mandate.

I was one of the very first kids to be vaccinated against polio. We were brought down to the schoolyard by our parents, stood in lines, and got a vaccination - later backed up with a sugar cube.

It's odd what one remembers. Almost seventy years later, what sticks in my mind was that I had never seen so many adults all standing around trying to smile at one another while tears ran down their faces. I'd never seen so many adults all crying at once like that.

Of course I knew nothing about what was going on. Polio was a forbidden subject; apparently it still is. Some kids vanished, a few returned... usually crippled. Many families just moved away.

I remember wondering if this meant that my best friend was going to come back. He went to the nurse's office the year before and nobody had seen him since.
Billy, where are you? I still miss you. I have a tractor now.
rScotty

Now if we just had a pill that cured stupidity. How nice would that be?

 

[Snobdds]

Sour grapes...

for you or him?

 

[ultrarunner]

There are work arounds…

Physicians start Surgery Centers… Hospitals with thousands of employees with RN CEO…

Have an acquaintance that owns a law firm… he is not a lawyer or studied law… he employs lawyers…

The business owners I’m thinking of are shop keepers, mechanics, welders and contractors mostly… plus farmers…

 

[Snobdds]

Unions collective barging to cater to the lowest common denominator in a given workforce. They raise the bottom up and lower the top produces to make an average workforce.

-An Economics Professor in Grad school.

I think he was ahead of his time.

 

[bigtiller]

A companies most valuable asset is its labor force. Provide them a safe environment, train them, treat them civilly, pay them well and they will provide the CEO the tools to make the company flourish.