Gap between CEO, worker pay continues to widen, report shows

August 28, 2026 by

The nation’s top executives gave themselves far bigger raises than the average worker saw last year.

The AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch report, released earlier this month, found that the pay gap between CEOs and the rest of us widened in 2025, with companies on the S&P 500 paying their chief executives 312 times more than the median U.S. worker, a 21% increase over 2024.

The nation’s largest labor federation analyzes compensation data each year to produce the report.

While the nationwide ratio for CEO-to-worker pay last year was 312-to-1, the ratio was even greater at six Minnesota-based, publicly traded firms:

  • Life Time Group Holdings: 1,814- to-1 (CEO earned $15.2 million)
  • Target: 794-to-1 ($21.8 million)
  • UnitedHealth Group: 748-to-1 ($60.9 million)
  • Best Buy: 542-to-1 ($16.1 million)
  • Ecolab: 326-to-1 ($17.4 million)
  • 3M: 316-to-1 ($21 million)

This year, researchers chose to exclude one CEO – Elon Musk – from their calculations. Musk’s $158.3 billion pay package, which made him the world’s first trillionaire, would have skewed the data, they said.

Still, with an average pay of $22.8 million last year, other CEOs on the S&P 500 enjoyed their highest level of compensation in the three decades that the AFL-CIO has been producing the report.

That marks “a new, shameful high,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond said at press conference to unveil the findings.

Redmond also noted that President Donald Trump has raked in $2.2 billion in income – much of it from crypto deals that cash in on his influence – since returning to the White House last year.

“Meanwhile, working Americans are struggling to feed their kids and pay their electric bills,” Redmond said.

Indeed, workers’ share of U.S. national income has fallen to its lowest level since World War II, per to the report.

Recent surveys show workers are increasingly concerned about affordability and economic uncertainty: 16% of U.S. adults cannot pay all their bills in full, 26% have skipped medical care due to cost and 37% do not have enough cash to cover a $400 emergency expense.

The AFL-CIO’s report takes aim at several companies on the S&P 500 where CEO pay continues to soar as an outsized share of their employees rely on public assistance, like Medicaid and SNAP, to make ends meet, including Amazon, Dollar Tree, FedEx, McDonald’s and Walmart.

Last summer, as part of the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” Trump and Republican majorities slashed federal support programs to pay for tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans – a sign of misplaced priorities in Washington, Redmond said.

“There’s a better economy we can build for working people,” he added. “That’s why the labor movement will continue to fight for every worker to have a union contract that begins to level the playing field and ensures they take home the share of the profit they create.”

Find the report online at paywatch.org.

Filed Under: Labor Voices Tagged With: , , , , ,

Local Teamsters show they’re ready to strike for fair share of record UPS profits

July 21, 2023 by

Hundreds of members of Teamsters Local 120 and Local 638 joined a rally and “practice picket” July 8 at the UPS hub in northeast Minneapolis. Real picketing could begin Aug. 1.

With “practice picketing” outside UPS facilities across the Twin Cities this month, local Teamsters are showing the company that they are prepared to strike – if necessary – when the contract covering 340,000 union members nationwide expires July 31.

“I don’t think anyone wants to go on strike, but we’ll do what we have to do,” Gunnar Johnson, a UPS driver and member of Teamsters Local 638, said while walking a picket line July 8 in Minneapolis. “We’re not asking for the moon. UPS can end this today if they want.”

That would mean settling a contract that meets Teamsters’ key demands: fair wage increases, elimination of a two-tier wage structure and no more mandatory six-day workweeks.

“I don’t think that’s asking too much of any employer, especially one that we’ve sacrificed so much to keep afloat,” Eagan-based loader Rikki Schreiner said. “They are the most successful and most reliable shipping company there is because of Teamster labor. We’ve taken good care of them, and now it’s time for them to take care of us.”

UPS reported record profits of $11.3 billion in 2022, with revenues exceeding $100 billion. CEO Carol Tomé earned $19 million in total compensation. Those numbers make Robert Cristino, a feeder driver in Maple Grove, confident UPS can do better by full- and part-time workers when it comes to wages and work-life balance.

Gunnar Johnson (L) and Robert Cristino, who work at the Maple Grove UPS hub, walked the practice picket line.

“The big lie is that everyone at UPS makes $94,000 or whatever a year. That’s what UPS likes to tell the media,” Cristino said “Sure, maybe you can make that, but you’ve got to work six days a week to get it. It’s too much all the time, and you never get a break.”

Johnson said an arrangement that allows UPS to deny pay increases to part-timers needs to go. “There are part-time drivers doing the same job as me, getting paid less,” he said. “You can go to Costco right now and make more. We just want everyone treated fairly.”

Talks between the union and UPS broke down at 4 a.m. July 5. After two weeks of Teamster picketing, the company finally called the union back into bargaining July 19, as this issue went to press.

In balloting across the country earlier this summer, 97% of Teamsters voted to authorize their bargaining team to call a strike, which would have a widespread impact on the U.S. economy and beyond. UPS delivers 24.3 million parcels daily, on average; that’s on par with the U.S. Postal Service and more than twice as many as FedEx delivers.

Rikki Schreiner is a union steward at the UPS facility in Eagan.

“We want – and we’re going to get – what we’ve got coming to us,” said Teamsters Local 120 President Tom Erickson, who serves as a vice president of the international union. “During the pandemic UPS had no problem taking advantage of our workers, and that stops on Aug. 1, one way or another.

“We’re either going to have a contract, or we’re going to be out on the street fighting for what we’ve got coming to us.”

Schreiner, who has worked at the Eagan facility since 1999, said she’s hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

“I’m ready,” she said. “We have to stand up for what we deserve. If we don’t, they’ll step all over us.”

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Workers warn ‘bigger does not mean better’ when it comes to hospital mergers

February 2, 2023 by

Rachel Hanneman, an intensive care nurse at Fairview Southdale, led a press conference before a Capitol hearing on legislation that would give the state Health Department power to block health system mergers. “Their right to do business ends where our right to accessible health care begins,” she said.

Since M Health Fairview and Sanford Health went public with plans to merge last November, workers have emerged as a leading voice of opposition, warning that further consolidation would not benefit Minnesota patients or workers, only the CEOs already profiting off the health care system.

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa spoke out at recent public hearings held across the state by Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office is investigating whether the proposed merger complies with state and federal laws.

Union members also joined together with family farmers and medical students at the Capitol earlier this week to support legislation that would give the Minnesota Department of Health authority to approve or to block hospital mergers after a review of their potential impacts.

Opponents of the merger point to data suggesting that a wave of corporate hospital mergers across the U.S. has resulted in higher costs for patients and reductions to the services offered in local communities, but no improvements in the quality of care offered.

“Studies show that health care mergers have caused a 41% increase in prices with no evidence of improved quality of care,” MNA Executive Director Rose Roach said during a press conference before Ellison’s hearing in St. Paul Jan. 10. “What we need is public stewardship and oversight, holding the hospitals accountable to us, the public, not these independent, profit-making entities that focus on generating revenue.”

As for stewardship, neither Sanford nor Fairview has a track record likely to inspire public trust.

M-Health Fairview closed two hospitals in the middle of the pandemic, including the state’s only dedicated COVID-19 hospital. At the same time, CEO James Hereford took a 90 percent raise to more than $3.5 million in annual compensation.

Sanford, meanwhile, paid a $49.5 million golden parachute to disgraced CEO Kelby Krabbenhoft, who spread medical disinformation during the pandemic.

“Our state government has an obligation to pursue lower health care costs, better outcomes for patients and better conditions for health care workers,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said. “This merger will do the exact opposite.

“As health care becomes more consolidated year after year, the only people benefiting are the CEOs. Now Minnesota’s regulators have a chance to draw a line in the sand and tell these regulators enough is enough.”

Rank-and-file union members, meanwhile, have raised concerns that the merger would threaten their collective bargaining rights and drive more health care workers out of the industry at a time when staffing shortfalls are at crisis levels.

Ericka Helling, an intensive care nurse at Fairview Southdale and a 25-year employee of the system, said she was “alarmed that a Minnesota institution could be bought and sold to an out-of-state entity.”

She noted that South Dakota is very different from Minnesota, where Helling’s union, the MNA, has a powerful seat at the table both in bargaining contracts and in oversight of the industry.

“Worrisome for me, as a union nurse, is what happens when an employer buys out a system,” she said. “Is our contract recognized? Do we need to fight all over again for the high standards and protections our contract provides the practice of nursing and patient care?”

M Health Fairview, Helling noted, refused to include language in its nurses’ most recent contract, settled in December, that would have extended the agreement’s terms through any merger.

Cliff Adams, an SEIU member who works at Fairview’s Masonic Children’s Hospital, echoed those concerns, and he called on Ellison and other leaders to focus on “the problems in our own backyard first and foremost,” including staff burnout, safety and racial equity.

“In the last four years we have seen our health care system strip away the caring aspect and monetize the health aspect,” Adams said. “We have seen failure from our employer. We are struggling to tackle these major issues with a large, home-based, Minnesota-oriented organization…

“Bigger does not always mean better.”

Union opposition helped tank a previous proposal to merge the two systems, forwarded in 2013.

Sanford and Fairview have said they hope to complete a merger by the end of this year.

The Attorney General’s office is also collecting public feedback on the merger online.

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Union members urge hospitals to address staffing shortfalls with higher wages

December 6, 2021 by

Hospital workers, clockwise from top-left, Cliff Adams, Emilee Greskowiak, Lolita Granados and Steele Miller joined a virtual press conference on staffing shortfalls.

About 8,000 health care workers have publicly offered to renegotiate their union contracts with Twin Cities hospitals in an effort to help address staffing shortfalls that, workers warn, are only getting worse.

Members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota announced the offer Nov. 30 in a virtual press conference, during which they described the impact short staffing has had on patient care in the hospitals where they work.

Emilee Greskowiak, a nursing assistant at United Hospital in St. Paul, said understaffing impacts patient comfort, safety and hygiene. She noted that it has been nearly two years since she’s had time to help her most patients shower.

Recently, Greskowiak added, she was the only aide serving a 25-patient ward, where registered nurses were understaffed, too.

“All I can do is empty trashes and let nurses know when people are drowning – having codes and rapids and struggling to survive through their traumas,” she said. “Nurses are barely getting their meds in by the end of shift, let alone proper care and hygiene that families desperately need to … become healthy.”

Some patients don’t get a bed at all, added Cliff Adams, a nursing station tech at M-Health Fairview Riverside Masonic Children’s Hospital. He said his unit, which treats patients with cancer and blood diseases, could not fill eight of its 24 beds recently because the “caregiver-to-patient ratio wasn’t adequate to safely provide care” to more than 16 patients.

“That meant eight beds – eight kids – did not have an opportunity to be properly cared for,” Adams said.

Understaffing is not a new problem at metro hospitals. Workers pointed to several reasons their co-workers have walked away or scaled back their hours in recent years, including the additional pressures created by the COVID-19 pandemic, once again surging in Minnesota.

But while workers see their bosses asking them to skip breaks, extend their shifts and postpone paid time off, what they don’t see from management is a plan to deal with the problem.

“It’s caused tension among staff members because we don’t have enough staff to go around,” said Lolita Granados, a clinical support specialist at Children’s in Minneapolis. “We’re missing sleep, we barely have time to eat, and we are tired.

“It is currently worse than I have ever experienced this before. We need help and support, and I would like the hospitals executives who are working from home … to step up.”

In letters to those executives, SEIU Healthcare leaders pointed to other hospitals in Minnesota that have reopened union contracts to increase wage rates and write in other incentives aimed at attracting and retaining workers, and they requested metro facilities do the same.

Twin Cities hospitals settled new, three-year contracts with SEIU members earlier this year, but wages were a sticking point in negotiations. Some 4,000 workers at United and other Allina locations were poised to strike before reaching an 11th hour agreement with the provider.

Those agreements call for wage increases ranging from 5% to 7.5% over three years. But with inflation on the rise, it’s already clear to workers like Methodist Hospital ER tech Steele Miller that hospitals need to do more.

“People are leaving these jobs for jobs that are less traumatic, less stressful, less exhausting and that pay more,” Miller said. “We are not greedy. We just need to be able to take care of ourselves while we take care of other people.”

Workers also noted that many hospitals are already paying temporary workers – so-called “travelers” – higher wages to deal with the shortage, and they called out executives like M Health Fairview CEO James Hereford, whose annual compensation has ballooned to over $3 million. Allina CEO Penny Wheeler recently topped the $2 million mark.

For Hereford, Wheeler and other hospital executives, Greskowiak offered some pointed advice.

“If you give us better pay and benefits, maybe you’ll keep and retain the staff that you have – and then also get more staff to help us get through this hard time,” she said. “Everyone’s traumatized and underpaid and missing their family and doesn’t want to do this anymore.

“It’s exhausting, and you’re burning out your staff left and right.”

 

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Five reasons workers are fighting Trump’s pick for labor secretary

January 30, 2017 by
SEIU Healthcare Minnesota members (L to R) Pam Ganser, Amy Pauly and Jodi Klembrook delivered a petition opposing Andy Puzder as labor secretary to Sen. Al Franken's office in Minneapolis.

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota members (L to R) Pam Ganser, Amy Pauly and Jodi Klembrook delivered a petition opposing Andy Puzder as labor secretary to Sen. Al Franken’s office in St. Paul.

Working people aren’t waiting for fast-food CEO and robotics enthusiast Andy Puzder’s confirmation hearings – twice delayed because he’s having difficulty completing the required ethics paperwork – to oppose President Donald Trump’s nominee for Labor secretary.

Last week fast-food workers led a demonstration outside Hardee’s, a chain operated by Puzder-led CKE Restaurants, in St. Paul. And this morning, members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota delivered a petition to Sen. Al Franken’s office in St. Paul with nearly 5,000 signatures opposing Puzder’s nomination.

Similar actions have popped up across the U.S., with more coming as Puzder’s confirmation hearing, set for Feb. 7 (if he can wrap up that pesky paperwork), draws nearer.

Why can’t working people stomach Puzder at the helm of the Department of Labor, an agency charged with enforcing and administering federal labor laws, from health and safety protections to overtime and discrimination rules?

1. As an employer, Puzder’s company has a disturbing track record of violating laws designed to protect working people.

An analysis of Department of Labor data by The Century Foundation found that since Puzder took over as CEO in 2000, at least 1,563 CKE workers have been exposed to wage theft, unsafe working conditions or other violations uncovered by the agency’s inspectors.

Combined, OSHA and Wage-and-Hour inspectors have closed 166 investigations of CKE facilities since 2000, leading to more than $156,000 in civil penalties and an additional $145,310 in back pay to 877 employees. In one case, Hardee’s restaurants in the St. Louis area were “having workers punch-in to work later than when they arrived to work, not paying them overtime for double shifts, and even striking hours off of time cards,” the Century report’s authors, Michael McCormack and Simon Glenn-Gregg, wrote.

Additionally, workers at 13 CKE restaurants in 10 states last week filed 33 new complaints alleging sexual harassment, unfair labor practices (union busting) and wage theft.

2. Last year, Puzder earned more in one day than his company’s minimum-wage workers earned in the entire year. Yet he not only opposes raising the wage, he spends his fortune financially backing efforts to stop it.

According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, Puzder donated $10,000 to a campaign trying to stop Nevada voters from passing a ballot initiative raising the state’s minimum wage by a mere $1, from $5.15 to $6.15. (Voters eventually approved the increase.)

Opponents of Andy Puzder's nomination to lead the Labor department rallies last Thursday outside Hardee's in St. Paul.

Opponents of Andy Puzder’s nomination to lead the labor department rallied last Thursday outside Hardee’s in St. Paul.

3. Puzder’s low-road approach to employment forces taxpayers to pick up the tab – to the tune of an estimated $247 million per year.

The National Employment Law Project ran the numbers in a report released last week, coming up with the jaw-dropping price tag for government services accessed by CKE employees. The report draws on an analysis by University of California Berkeley economists who found that low wages and lack of benefits force 52 percent of fast-food workers to rely on public assistance to make ends meet.

4. Puzder’s company outsourced jobs to the Philippines.

In 2010, according to a report by the Associated Press, CKE laid off 20 Americans employed in its restaurant information technology department, which later reopened in the Philippines. The decision also resulted in layoffs at a staffing firm in California.

5. His public statements reveal contempt for working people, particularly those people most vulnerable to the kinds of mistreatment the Department of Labor is supposed to police.

In a 2011 address to students of Westmont College, Puzder described his hiring practices by saying, “In fast food, you sort of compete for the best of the worst.” And in an interview with Business Insider, Puzder openly fantasized about replacing fast-food workers with robots because they “never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case.”

And who could forget Puzder offering a stirring defense of his company’s advertising campaign that showed scantily clad models wolfing down Thickburgers? “I like our ads,” Puzder told Entrepreneur magazine. “I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American.”

American, indeed. Just like low wages, outsourcing and corporate welfare. It’s no surprise working people are raising hell.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gold watch? Fountain pen? For 25th anniversary, AT&T guts MN workers’ sick leave

May 13, 2015 by
CWA Local 7250 members impacted by AT&T's sick-pay policy include Susan Anderson,

CWA Local 7250 members impacted by AT&T’s sick-pay policy include Susan Anderson (green coat), Dan Waalen-Radzevicius (black coat) and Deb Derke (red shirt).

Members of Local 7250 of the Communications Workers of America called a grievance strike yesterday. About 200 workers picketed outside AT&T’s offices downtown Minneapolis in support of their longest-tenured co-workers, who have seen requests for sick pay denied by the company.

AT&T claims it’s not required to allow workers with 25 or more years of experience to use their paid-sick time to care for family members – even though workers with less than 25 years experience can.

It’s an interpretation of a new state law that AT&T is defending in federal court. But in the meantime, where does that leave employees who have given a quarter-century or more to the Fortune 500 telecommunications company?

On the picket line yesterday, Debra Derke estimated she’s lost about eight months’ pay since her husband suffered a heart attack in August 2013 – the first in a string of major health crises. Derke’s husband suffered a second heart attack in March and is now paralyzed.

“We have a lot of doctor’s appointments that I need to attend. There are a lot of times when the PCA’s don’t show up. I’ve got to take care of him,” Derke said. “That’s my new normal. Every day I wake up to find out whether I can or can’t come to work.”

And though her contract says she has access to paid sick time, AT&T won’t let Derke use it to care for her husband, in effect, because she’s been with the company too long.

“It will be 30 years on Oct. 28, 30 years of my life supporting this company,” Derke said. “(AT&T CEO) Randall Stephenson hasn’t been there that long.”

Derke’s case is the most extreme, but other Minnesotans have filed grievances related to AT&T’s sick-pay policy as well.

Dan Waalen-Radzevicius requested four paid-sick days to care for his husband, whose injuries resulting from a stray-cat attack became seriously infected and left him drifting in and out of consciousness. Susan Anderson requested one paid-sick day to care for her husband as he began his battle against prostate cancer.

Waalen-Radzevicius has 29 years’ experience at AT&T; Anderson has 34. AT&T denied both workers’ requests.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” Waalen-Radzevicius said. “Our CEO made $20 million-plus last year, plus bonuses, plus trips – everything. And he can’t afford to pay us this minimal amount?”

CWA estimates only about 100 workers statewide fall into the gap created by AT&T’s sick-pay policy, but workers of all ages and experience levels walked alongside Derke, Waalen-Radzevicius and Anderson on the picket line yesterday. Divide-and-conquer tactics won’t work with this group, they said.

“Someday they’re going to be in our shoes,” Anderson said of less experienced workers. “It’s great they’re supporting us. It’s what unions are all about.”

Union members look out for each other, Derke added, just like family members take care of each other.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s so heartwarming to know I’m not alone here. We all work here, and we are family.”

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Workers to keep pressure on Verizon with May 3 picket in Roseville

May 2, 2012 by

Workers outside the Verizon Store in Roseville during the “National Day of Action” March 22.

Apparently, Verizon didn’t get the message the first time.

On March 22, union members protested outside Verizon Stores across the country in a “Verizon National Day of Action.” Tomorrow workers nationwide will stage more informational pickets, timed to coincide with the company’s annual shareholder meeting Alabama.

In the Twin Cities, the informational picket will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. outside the Verizon Wireless Store in Roseville, located at 2325 Fairview Ave. N. (This is not the store inside the Rosedale Mall.)

It’s the same Verizon location where workers picketed March 22. Workers inside the Roseville store are not union members, and demonstrators will not attempt to prevent customers from entering the store.

Rather, the point of the informational picket is customer education and solidarity with Verizon’s 45,000 union workers on the East Coast, who are members of the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

These union members have been working without a contract since the previous agreement with the company expired in August 2011.

Although Verizon claims it needs concessions from its workers totaling $20,000 per member annually, the truth is the company is turning record profits.

The company is so profitable, in fact, that CEO Lowell McAdam recently tripled his annual compensation, from $7.2 million to $23.1 million. And while the company claims it needs to strip its union workers of their pensions and health benefits, Verizon’s top executives have taken home $258 million over the last four years.

For more information on the Verizon campaign, go to www.cwa-union.org/verizon.

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