Consequences of raising salaries...

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Top salaries are getting obscene, and the old argument that you can't get talented people for less is really suspect. 

We've just had a really bitter scandal here in the UK, where seven consultants were constantly warning that an incredible stream of unexpected infant deaths in a hospital in Chester were all happening when one particular nurse was on shift. 

She's just been convicted of the murder of seven babies, attempted murder of six, and got off several more for lack of conclusive evidence. 

The management didn't get it, over and over, even forcing the consultants to APOLOGISE to the murderer, nurse Lucy Letby, and they were threatened with being reported to the medical council if they persisted. 

These managers were all on big salaries, but really, they could not have done a worse job. They've all left with payoffs and big pension pots on top of their big salaries. Any one of the consultants, or nursing staff, or parents, or porters could have done a better job, but we're still fed this line that "you can't get that sort of talent for less" . 

The way top salaries have exploded isn't market forces, it's backroom deals. These people set their own salaries, and the salaries of the people who set their salaries. It's all deals done in back rooms and on golf greens, and talent has very little to do with it. It used to be freemasons, now it's little 'clubs' that get together and milk the public.

This is often due to a mismatch of skills. What I have heard from health professionals is that health administrators typically have no medical skills, and increasingly try to force health workers to work like office workers (e.g. just use SOP, check lists instead of medical judgment to limit spending, etc.).

I.e. folks who are managers and admins, tend to think that they can run all orgs the same (or at least similarly) regardless of what the mission is.

 

[mistermack]

29 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I.e. folks who are managers and admins, tend to think that they can run all orgs the same (or at least similarly) regardless of what the mission is.

Managers who are shit at management, in other words. Getting huge salaries and pensions, dwarfing those of the consultants who took their concerns to them. 

[CharonY]

I do wish that administration would include more folks who have a background in the services they provide (i.e. healthcare, education, research etc.).

The few I met ran an incredibly tight ship, whereas the career managers don't seem to be certain what they supposed to do (except to get another VP on board to figure that one out).

[Endy0816]

@mistermack

How do those salaries compare with salaries elsewhere in the Anglosphere?

[mistermack]

6 minutes ago, Endy0816 said:

How do those salaries compare with salaries elsewhere in the Anglosphere?

I haven't got a breakdown of the various salaries, but the British press have been full of outrage about what they get, and payoff details, so I would google Lucy Letbe if you're interested. I remember one guy left with a £500,000 pension pot, and four of them incredibly got an extra job title of "guardians of openness" or something similar, actually being responsible for protecting whistle blowers. You really couldn't make it up. 

My point is the lack of basic common sense, in so-called managers who are on very substantial salaries, that indicates that the salaries are not high due to market forces or talent, they're up there because they have power over their own rates of pay. 

If you own a business, there's nothing wrong with that, but when you are a paid employee in a quasi government organisation, there's no way you should have any influence on your salary, not on anyone else in management. It's a recipe for mutual back-scratching. 

PS. The British Museum are in the firing line for similar shit management at the moment. Thousands of items stolen, in spite of the management being alerted at least two years ago that it's treasures were being sold on ebay. Just like the Chester Hospital, they "investigated" and it was "case closed" until the true facts came out. 

[John Cuthber]

2 hours ago, Endy0816 said:

@mistermack

How do those salaries compare with salaries elsewhere in the Anglosphere?

Is this the sort of data you were looking for?
The average salary for Hospital Chief Executive Officer is £141,327 per year in the United Kingdom. The average additional cash compensation for a Hospital Chief Executive Officer in the United Kingdom is £43,772, with a range from £17,122 - £111,900.

from
https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/hospital-chief-executive-officer-salary-SRCH_KO0,32.htm#:~:text=The average salary for Hospital,from £17%2C122 - £111%2C900.

[mistermack]

The chief executive of Chester, the hospital trust in question, was on £160,000 according to the Daily Mail, and got an £80,000 goodbye gift when he left, and I think (not sure) that he was the one that had amassed the £500,000 pension pot. This is Prime Minister sort of money in the UK, for a man who wasn't competent enough to recognise a serial killer at work when told it by seven hospital consultants. All he had to do was let the police know it MIGHT be happening, one phone call would have done it. Most of the hospital porters would have had the brains to do that. 

Another case that springs to mind is the Chief Executive of the National Westminster bank, who resigned in disgrace after gossiping about a customer's account, leaking financial details of the Politician's finances. She's reported to be getting a 2.4 million payoff as a reward for incompetence. There's a picture emerging, but it's going on day in day out.

Lucy Letby hospital's chief executive 'was paid £80,000 by NHS' after stepping down from £160,000 role when killer nurse was arrested | Daily Mail Online

[Endy0816]

31 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

Is this the sort of data you were looking for?
The average salary for Hospital Chief Executive Officer is £141,327 per year in the United Kingdom. The average additional cash compensation for a Hospital Chief Executive Officer in the United Kingdom is £43,772, with a range from £17,122 - £111,900.

from
https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/hospital-chief-executive-officer-salary-SRCH_KO0,32.htm#:~:text=The average salary for Hospital,from £17%2C122 - £111%2C900.

Quote

The average salary for Hospital Ceo is $203,578 per year in the United States. The average additional cash compensation for a Hospital Ceo in the United States is $66,214, with a range from $49,661 - $92,700.

https://www.glassdoor.co.in › Salaries

 

Salary: Hospital Ceo in United States August 2023 - Glassdoor

Yes, thank you. Not to discount cronyism, but looks to be pretty comparable factoring in the current exchange rate.

[Endy0816]

On 8/25/2023 at 5:11 PM, mistermack said:

PS. The British Museum are in the firing line for similar shit management at the moment. Thousands of items stolen, in spite of the management being alerted at least two years ago that it's treasures were being sold on ebay. Just like the Chester Hospital, they "investigated" and it was "case closed" until the true facts came out. 

I'd read about this and mostly just found it ironic considering 'keeping artifacts safe' was often used as an excuse for not repatriating artifacts to their respective countries.

I'm otherwise of the opinion it reflects several issues though not least with the management like you say. Requires a breakdown at multiple levels for stuff to leave unnoticed over such a long period. This was no Thomas Crown Affair level art theft lol. On the plus side should be easier to recover the items.

Edited August 27, 2023 by Endy0816

[John Cuthber]

On 8/23/2023 at 5:53 PM, Externet said:

Try designing/repairing/manufacturing/correcting robots assembly errors in microelectronics for a year and then tell me what you think it should be worth.

Why don't you stop + retrain as a UPS driver?

 

[Externet]

Here we go.   Auto workers to strike; demanding more money for less days of work. Who wins?  The orientals selling more cars. 

On other areas, the Hollywood crews, truckers, airlines coming among too many others.  All will dance and party when bigger salaries are obtained, spread in the following years, as to constantly pushing inflation instead of a single hit, making the cost of living impossible for the retired.  Everyone else will push for the $ame treatment. All workers in every field, as if someone else did, me too !!  The plain citizen paying.    What is $100 becomes $200 and the increased salaries return back to the same bitter flavor with the lack of respect to the currency.  What is the result ?  -Same with bigger figures, as been for many decades.  Decades of non-stop raising costs as the easy way to do it instead of lowering costs.   Noooo, that is too hard; keep doing what is easy ! 

Next we will pay $50 for a pound of chinese ground beef.  We already have chinese apple pie and orange juice, right ?  

[swansont]

CEOs seem to have been winning, for quite a long time

https://www.nevadacurrent.com/blog/ceos-get-richer-while-their-workers-wages-remain-the-same-study-finds/

 

And workers have not been getting paid in line with their productivity

https://m.usw.org/blog/2015/wages-have-been-stagnant-for-40-years-but-its-not-the-fault-of-american-workers

 

[mistermack]

59 minutes ago, swansont said:

CEOs seem to have been winning, for quite a long time

It's hardly surprising, when they have the means of setting their own remuneration in their own hands. What would anybody do?

If you own your company, there's nothing wrong with that. Otherwise, it's corrupt.

The theoretical brake on that is the shareholders, who in theory have a vested interest in not having the company ripped off by those at the top. But what happens in practice is that the shareholders are represented by people with the same interests as the CEO, and they all get together and award each other whatever they can get away with. 

The only way to break that cycle is a law that fixes management pay scales to a multiple of the average salary of that organisation. And pay those salaries in company shares, not cash. 

[swansont]

On 9/15/2023 at 11:26 AM, Externet said:

Here we go.   Auto workers to strike; demanding more money for less days of work. Who wins?  The orientals selling more cars. 

In addition to my previous post, one should also note that auto workers took a pay cut when automakers struggled during the great recession

“the UAW agreed to $11 billion in labor cuts, twenty-one thousand layoffs, a wage freeze for workers, a tiered wage system for new workers, a no-strike agreement until 2015, and the transfer of retirees’ health care and pension benefit costs from GM to the UAW, in order to save GM $3 billion. The union is still fighting to regain the ground they lost from these concessions.”

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/united-auto-workers-uaw-strike-big-three-automakers-stock-buyback-shareholders

[swansont]

https://newrepublic.com/post/175598/gm-ceo-mary-barra-30-million-salary-uaw-strike

“[GM CEO] salary has increased 34 percent over the last four years, while in four years workers’ pay has only increased by 6 percent.

Under the current contract, the $18 per hour starting pay for autoworkers is about 36 percent below where it would be if the 2007 starting wage had kept up with inflation.”

(average inflation from 2007-2020 was about 2%

[John Cuthber]

On 8/27/2023 at 9:42 AM, John Cuthber said:

Why don't you stop + retrain as a UPS driver?

 

I'm still waiting for you to explain why, if you think UPS drivers get such a  great deal, you haven't joined them.
 
Incidentally, workers demanding more money doesn't generate inflation; it reduces CEO and shareholder pay.
The bit about "the price just  gets passed on to the consumer" doesn't really work because , as you say, the consumer decides to buy cheaper from elsewhere.
So the local company realises that, if it wants to stay in business, it's better to reduce CEO/ shareholder remuneration than to go bust.

What causes inflation is printing more money or otherwise devaluing it.
Strikes just redistribute the same amount of money to a different group of people.

Inflation is the reduction of value of money.
The value of the money depends on what I can get for it- how many square yards of lawn can I get mown for a dollar?
How much bread can I buy for a pound?

If you give lots of the money to people who do not actually do, or produce anything, then (on average) you get less done for your money.

Huge CEO salaries are the worst cause of inflation.

Edited September 19, 2023 by John Cuthber

[swansont]

So the “big three” auto makers have settled, raising wages by 25% over the contract.

“Ford, for example, said that the contract would make each vehicle the company produces around $900 more expensive.”

https://www.thestreet.com/automotive/former-ford-ceo-has-a-blunt-warning-for-workers-following-the-conclusion-of-historic-auto-strikes

But for an $18,000 car, that’s just a 5% bump over 4 years. Not really a big driver of inflation

(Also, Toyota (non-unionized) is giving its workers raises, presumably to fight against unionization efforts and/or defections.)

[iNow]

Ford and GM will also be / already are blaming this for their decision last week to pull back from expensive EV vehicle transition efforts. 

[pacman9090]

Higher wages can motivate employees to work harder and improve morale.

[iNow]

8 minutes ago, pacman9090 said:

Higher wages can motivate employees to work harder and improve morale.

Only up until some threshold, though. The return on the gain follows an inverted U-shape as wages grow progressively higher.

Workers can also be motivated to work harder via cattle prods or at the tip of a gun, but that obviously decreases morale.

[Sensei]

6 minutes ago, pacman9090 said:

Higher wages can motivate employees to work harder and improve morale.

..or they can cause company to go bankrupt..

..or wipe out entire sectors of the economy.. like Detroit.. or communism (people took to the streets not to fight communism, but to get higher wages).

High wages that make up a significant portion of the product price = expensive end product that can discourage customers from buying (especially in tough years, during the economic crisis). Add to that strong labor unions that refuse to restructure the company (by lowering wages and/or reducing the number of employees), and disaster is ready.

 

There must be a healthy balance between wages and company productivity and employee productivity.

[swansont]

11 hours ago, Sensei said:

There must be a healthy balance between wages and company productivity and employee productivity.

Which has already been shown to have been skewed toward the company and not the worker, during the last ~5 decades in the US

[J.C.MacSwell]

On 9/19/2023 at 6:29 AM, John Cuthber said:

I'm still waiting for you to explain why, if you think UPS drivers get such a  great deal, you haven't joined them.
 

 

Hasn't been answered and maybe it's just my opinion but it seems obvious to me that Externet would be far far more interested in his current work than making that switch.

It's not always just about the money...

 

[pacman9090]

On 10/31/2023 at 11:07 PM, iNow said:

Only up until some threshold, though. The return on the gain follows an inverted U-shape as wages grow progressively higher.

Workers can also be motivated to work harder via cattle prods or at the tip of a gun, but that obviously decreases morale.

Yes, it is all about balance, if that is what you mean. If you have to motivate your employees with brute force something about your business model is wrong.

On 10/31/2023 at 11:32 PM, Sensei said:

..or they can cause company to go bankrupt..

..or wipe out entire sectors of the economy.. like Detroit.. or communism (people took to the streets not to fight communism, but to get higher wages).

High wages that make up a significant portion of the product price = expensive end product that can discourage customers from buying (especially in tough years, during the economic crisis). Add to that strong labor unions that refuse to restructure the company (by lowering wages and/or reducing the number of employees), and disaster is ready.

 

There must be a healthy balance between wages and company productivity and employee productivity.

Yes, wages should be fair on both ends, to both lower operating costs and properly compensate employees.

[iNow]

10 hours ago, pacman9090 said:

Yes, it is all about balance, if that is what you mean

I mean there are diminishing returns as wages keep growing.