WASHINGTON–As the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike enters its fourth day, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Tuesday wrote a Substack post slamming the Big 3 automakers – General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis – for their refusal to give workers their fair share. Murphy outlined how CEO salaries have skyrocketed and far outpaced worker pay and shared his support for UAW workers to get what they deserve.

“American workers have been getting screwed for too long. Screwed by corporations that care only about profits and short-term returns, feeling no ethical responsibility toward the people who work at the company. Screwed by an economic and tax structure that rewards that exact kind of amoral behavior, providing CEOs with incentives, rather than disincentives, to keep wages low and profits high. Screwed by organizing rules that make it really hard for workers to form a union and really easy for employers to break a union. Screwed by the government that refuses to take even the most basic steps – like raising the minimum wage – to tip the balance of power toward workers and away from millionaires and corporations,” Murphy wrote.

Murphy debunked claims that the Big 3 can’t afford to give their workers a raise: “The big three American car companies are swimming in money these days. They collectively reported making $21 billion in profits – just in the first half of 2023! But they don’t want to use that money to help workers; they want to keep padding the salaries of executives, pay huge dividends to shareholders (like big banks and  hedge funds), and buy back their own stock to prop up stock price.”

Murphy highlighted the egregious pay disparity between CEOs and their workers: “In 1965, the average CEO made 20 times more than that company’s average worker. Today, CEOs make 400 times the average worker. That’s disgusting, and totally unnecessary. GM’s CEO makes $30 million a year. I can’t even imagine what a human being would do with $30 million in 12 months. It has no connection to actual human needs, and the idea that GM can’t be run well by a CEO who makes $3 million, instead of $30 million, is absurd. Does the extra $27 million magically cause the CEO to come up with better products?

“If the auto workers stay out on strike for a long time, it will be no one’s fault except for the rapacious executives who cannot conceive of a world in which they don’t get to capture all the fruits of economic growth. I’m not rooting for a long strike, but I’m also not rooting for capitulation. Sometimes fights are necessary to shake the consciousness of a society. Something stinks in America today – workers are getting shafted, left and right, and all of us have become too accepting of an economic system that has fundamentally changed right before our eyes,” Murphy concluded. “We don’t have to accept workers getting screwed and millionaires getting richer and richer. We don’t have to overthink the auto industry strike. We can choose to support the workers.

Read the full post here.

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