Joe Manchin Mocked Bernie’s $15 Minimum Wage Bill at Lobbyist Event

When Joe Manchin told attendees at the National Restaurant Association (NRA)’s national conference on Tuesday that the minimum wage shouldn’t be more than $11 and there should still be a subminimum wage for tipped workers, the group’s chief lobbyist couldn’t contain his excitement.

“From your lips to God’s ears,” exclaimed Sean Kennedy, the NRA’s executive vice president of public affairs, who spoke with the Democratic senator from West Virginia as part of a virtual panel titled, “Seeking Unity: Conversations on Finding Bipartisan Solutions.” READ MORE

J&J Shareholders Urged by Others to Reject CEO's $30 Million Payday

Johnson & Johnson Chief Executive Officer Alex Gorsky is up for a whopping $30 million payday. However, several prominent investors are urging shareholders to reject the compensation package because it shields the executive from billions of dollars in opioid-related litigation costs to the company.

J&J is a target in multiple lawsuits over the marketing of its opioid products. Despite those legal concerns and settlements of nearly $5 billion over the past two years, the CEO was up for a pay increase.  READ MORE

Proxy Season: Early Highlights and Emerging Themes

The COVID-19 pandemic, volatile market conditions, and increasing stakeholder attention to a range of environmental and social topics made 2020 a remarkably difficult year for many public companies. 2021 will bring new challenges, as major investors and proxy advisors signal enhanced scrutiny of director nominees and executive compensation programs, as well as more openness to environmental and social shareholder proposals.

As many companies prepare for upcoming annual meetings, we take stock of early proxy season activity, highlighting early results and emerging themes relevant to corporate leaders. READ MORE

CEOs are getting paid bonuses like there was no pandemic

Yum Brands' profits slumped hard last year as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered restaurants around the U.S. That didn't stop the fast-food giant from awarding its CEO a multimillion-dollar bonus.

The company, whose restaurant brands include KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, disclosed in a recent regulatory filing that CEO David Gibbs had failed to qualify for a hefty payout because of the company's 25% drop in earnings in 2020. Yet Yum's board of directors also said it was "unfair" for the executive to give up his bonus just because of the pandemic's adverse impact on the company's financial results. READ MORE

Biden calls on employers to provide paid time off for COVID-19 vaccines

President Biden on Wednesday urged U.S. employers to provide their workers with paid time off to receive the COVID-19 vaccine – and any time it takes to recover from the shot – as the White House looks to encourage reluctant Americans to be inoculated. READ MORE

Andrew Cuomo Earned $225,000 Last Year And Is Highest Paid Governor In American History

With a $225,000 salary, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the country’s highest paid governor. The next highest paid is California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who made $202,000 last year.

In fact, Cuomo was scheduled to make $250,000 in 2021 — with another $25,000 pay increase — completing a three-year $71,000 pay hike (40-percent). However, he opted not to take the extra $25,000. (In 2018, an appointed state panel gave the legislature and governor hefty pay hikes.) READ MORE

Restaurants dangle bonuses amid labor shortage — and workers aren’t biting

The restaurant industry is starved for workers –and some operators are going to desperate lengths to reel in prospective hires.

James Meadowcraft, a McDonald’s manager in Tampa, Fla., recently advertised plans to pay $50 per job interview on the sign outside his location that sits along a busy thoroughfare. READ MORE

Why you should put salaries on your job ads

Startups are big fans of ‘competitive salaries’. Head to a tech jobs board and you’ll see what I mean. 

But all this competitiveness has to stop. Every single job description should show a salary or salary range — and there are no excuses. READ MORE

CEO Pay Trends During the Pandemic Show More Than Meets the Eye

CEO pay fell in 2020 at the largest U.S. companies, according to a new report from Equilar. The Equilar 100, an annual study of the 100 largest U.S. companies by revenue to file a proxy statement prior to March 31, found that total CEO compensation was $15.5 million at the median, down 1.6% from $15.7 million in the 2019 study.

Meanwhile, median revenue for the largest 100 companies to file by March 31, 2021 was $37.4 billion, up slightly from $37.3 billion the year prior. READ MORE

Some CEOs Are Hearing A New Message: Act On Climate, Or We'll Cut Your Pay

Corporate America wants you to know that it takes climate change seriously. But how can you tell if businesses will follow through?

Here's one idea that's catching on: Cut the pay of corporate leaders if they don't meet their climate goals. READ MORE

Compensation And Benefits Considerations In The American Rescue Plan Act Of 2021

The American Rescue Plan Act of 20211 (the ARPA or the Act) was signed into law on March 11, 2021. Among myriad other topics, the Act builds upon, modifies, or otherwise addresses the relief promulgated in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA).2 In addition, the Act includes several new provisions in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that impact employee benefits and executive compensation. READ MORE

Berkshire directors rebuked over pay for likely Buffett successors

The shareholder adviser ISS is recommending investors withhold their votes from four directors at Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in a rebuke of the company’s executive pay policies. The refusal to back the re-election of four members of Berkshire’s compensation committee reflects concern over the pay packages awarded to vice-chairs Greg Abel and Ajit Jain, who ISS said earn some of the largest base salaries of any executives at US public companies. READ MORE

Still weighing vaccine incentives? Here’s what 12 employers have done

COVID-19 vaccination is vital to end the pandemic, but it’s not proving to be an easy task. Although vaccines are here and are becoming more widely available, skepticism and hesitation still surround the shots, and scores of Americans say they do not plan to get vaccinated. That’s where employers come in.

Employers are widely seen as essential in encouraging employees to get inoculated and boost vaccination numbers across the country. READ MORE

Kyrsten Sinema Wears 'Fuck Off' Ring After Controversial $15 Minimum Wage Vote

Democratic Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema posted a photo of herself brandishing a ring that read "Fuck Off" a little over a month after she voted against a measure to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The Arizona Democrat, 44, posted the picture on Instagram on Sunday as she continues to face a backlash from within her own party for voting against the $15 minimum wage, and for teaming up with Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) on an $11 proposal. READ MORE

The Pandemic’s Effect on Measured Wage Growth

Usually when we see rising wages, the economy is growing. So how is it that April 2020 – the month when the U.S. economy lost 21 million jobs – saw some of the fastest wage growth in recent memory? And if wage growth slows in the coming months, or even goes into negative territory, what would that tell us about the economic recovery? We explain in this blog why we believe that two measurement issues—composition of the labor force and base effects—explain these trends and why average wage data will be easy to misinterpret in the coming months. READ MORE

Shareholder groups urge 'no' vote on GE exec pay

The two most influential proxy advisory groups came out last week against General Electric Co.’s compensation packages for CEO Larry Culp and other top executives, taking particular umbrage with last year’s changes to Culp’s employment agreement.

Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and Glass Lewis & Co. both advised GE shareholders to cast “nay” votes on the Boston-based company’s executive compensation at its annual meeting May 4. The pay-package vote is non-binding. READ MORE

Tech billionaires are staying “very, very quiet” on proposals to tax their wealth

Billionaires like Bill Gates have long said that they, theoretically, would be in favor of paying much more money in personal taxes.

And yet Gates and some of the wealthiest people in the world are staying silent on a series of active proposals that would do just that, sidestepping a legislative package in their home state of Washington that targets them specifically. READ MORE

A catch-22 for women: Negotiating for higher pay can backfire, study finds

Working women have been tutored to "lean in" when it comes to pushing for higher pay on the job — after all, passively accepting an employer's first offer may not pay off, the thinking goes. But negotiating for more women or a promotion may not be so simple, even for high-powered women with strong bargaining positions, a recent study concludes. READ MORE

CEO who gave employees $70K minimum wage says revenue tripled 6 years later

A CEO who cut his own salary to give all of his employees a minimum wage of at least $70,000 per year says his company's revenue has tripled since he made the move. 

"6 years ago today I raised my company's min wage to $70k. Fox News called me a socialist whose employees would be on bread lines," Dan Price, the CEO of Seattle-based credit card processing company Gravity Payments, tweeted Tuesday. "Since then our revenue tripled, we're a Harvard Business School case study & our employees had a 10x boom in homes bought."  READ MORE

How Organizations Can Recover from the Pandemic’s Impact on Pay Equity and Transparency

The gender pay gap has taken a hit during the pandemic, with economists predicting it may take nearly 20 years to recover to pre-pandemic levels of equality. At the same time, the workplace has been completely transformed, likely for good, with changes resulting from an overnight switch to remote work and fluctuating economic uncertainty.

But how have these changes impacted worker perceptions of their employers, and where do employees’ priorities stand moving forward? READ MORE