CEOs spending more on stock buybacks than capital investments and employee retirement plan contributions
The CEOs of some of the largest employers with the lowest-paid workers in the US are more “focused on their own personal short-term windfall” – spending significantly more money on stock buybacks than capital investments and contributions to employee retirement plans, according to a new report released by the Institute for Policy Studies.
Between 2019 to 2023, the 100 largest low-wage employers in the US, the 100 corporations in the S&P 500 with the lowest median worker pay, spent $522bn on stock buybacks. Lowe’s and Home Depot spent the most on stock buybacks, with Lowe’s spending $42.6bn during this period and Home Depot spending $37.2bn.
The report cites that Lowe’s could have used those funds to give every one of its 285,000 employees an annual $29,865 bonus for five years, and Home Depot could have used those funds to give five annual $16,071 bonuses to each of the retailer’s 463,100 employees.
I mean, file this under "duh!" but I also recognize that having hard numbers to demonstrate what we already know is a necessary first step to addressing it.
It's even worse considering that if a CEO even thinks of raising wages, talking to the union, etc, they'll be fired by the board of directors if their company has one. (Context: the CEO of Starbucks just so happened to be fired for unknown reasons after actually talking to their union.)
Well, voting hasn’t worked to curb these issues and government has been inept at doing much beyond fines. Our option then is really just to murder them all. I am not going to spearhead that. Are you? Would love your solutions since you are sick of the action we can take.