On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) stated that it’s wrong to blame the push for electric vehicles and green subsidies for hurting auto workers and that CEOs and companies are making tons of money.
Host Chris Hayes noted that the auto industry and its CEOs have done very well and asked, “Republicans have tried to basically make the case that the problem here is the Inflation Reduction Act and the push for electric vehicles, and that Joe Biden’s woke agenda is what’s hurting American auto workers. … What’s your response to that?”
Peters responded, “Well, it’s ridiculous. And clearly, you look at the amount of money that these CEOs are making and senior executives, you look at the profits these companies — already this year combined, over $20 billion in profits. What the workers are saying is that these are good times, and we sacrificed, we took cuts in pay, we had a dual-tier pay structure as we went through the financial crisis. Now, we’re doing really well, we should be able to share in that. And I think that’s why we see unions are gaining in favorability all across the country. If you look at public opinion polls now, the favorability is well over 60% of people who favor unions, that’s the highest since 1963. And let’s look at, 1963, the average CEO made 30 times what the average worker made. Today, it’s 400 or 500 times what the average worker makes and workers are saying, wait a minute, something is askew here, let’s bring fairness to our jobs and to our everyday living.”
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