According to research, top CEOs worldwide saw a real-term salary increase of 9% in 2022, while employees had a global pay decrease of 3% during the same period.
The average salary for 150 of India’s highest-paid CEOs was USD 1 million in 2022, a real-term pay increase of 2% from 2021.
According to new research from Oxfam released on International Workers’ Day, employees, on average, worked six days “for free” in 2022 because their pay lagged behind inflation. In contrast, actual income for top executives increased by 9% (16% if not adjusted for inflation) in India, the UK, the US, and South Africa.
Compared to 2022, when salaries had stayed up with inflation, one billion workers across 50 nations lost an average of USD 685 in real wages.
The report also estimated that women and girls perform at least 380 billion hours of unpaid care work every month.
Because of their unpaid care duties, women workers frequently have to work fewer paid hours or leave the workforce altogether. Nevertheless, the findings revealed that they still experience harassment, salary disparity for labour of equivalent value to men, and gender-based discrimination.
“Corporate executives give themselves and their shareholder’s enormous bonuses while telling us we should keep wages low,” said Amitabh Behar, interim executive director of Oxfam International, while adding that most people work harder for less money and need help to keep up with rising living expenses.
The wealth gap between the wealthy and the rest of society has expanded due to years of austerity and attacks on trade unions.
The only increase that workers have noticed is in the amount of unpaid caregiving that women do, according to Behar. The community and those at home perform this backbreaking and worthwhile labour for no pay.
In contrast, shareholder dividends reached a record USD 1.56 trillion in 2022, a 10% real growth over 2021.
The treatment of employees as lambs for the slaughter each time a crisis arises has grown stale. Instead, according to neoliberal ideology, Behar stated, everyone but profit-driven firms is to blame for inflation.
“Governments should stop depending solely on interest rate increases and austerity measures, which, as we all know, harms regular people, especially people with low incomes,” the official remarked further.
Instead, Behar suggested that they implement top tax rates of at least 75% on highly wealthy corporate executives to discourage excessive CEO compensation and windfall taxes on absurd business profits.