Auto CEOs Make About 300 Times What Their Median Worker Is Paid. Here’s How That Stacks Up.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain has criticized the Big Three automakers for the raises given to their CEOs in the past few years, saying wage gains for rank-and-file employees haven’t kept pace. By one measure—the ratio of the CEO’s pay to the median worker’s—automakers have a wider pay gap than most large companies. And over the past four years, the gap at the three has widened.
The leaders of Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, all targets of current UAW strikes, received between $21 million and $29 million in compensation last year. The median CEO pay package for S&P 500 companies was $14.5 million last year. The UAW originally proposed a 40% wage increase for members, which the union said matched the average compensation hike that Detroit automotive executives received over the past four years.
The average compensation figure cited by the UAW is inflated by the increase of more than 70% for Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares, who oversees a much larger company today than he did four years ago. Tavares was CEO of Peugeot S.A. in 2019 when the company agreed to merge with Fiat Chrysler, creating what was later renamed Stellantis.
In 2022, the three CEOs earned around 300 times what the median employee earned. That puts the automakers in the top third of about 500 large companies by that measure, according to information compiled from securities filings by data provider MyLogIQ. CEO pay varies widely by industry, and much of it is tied to stock awards.
Technology and media chiefs are often among the highest paid, thanks to such grants. All three automakers also ranked in the top third in pay ratio among U.S. companies that they listed in their securities filings as peers for compensation benchmarking.
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