A top CEO now earns 77 times more than an industrial worker, according to LO's annual review in the report Makteliten. That is a clear increase from the previous year when the figure was 71.
It must be stopped. It's enough now, says LO chairman Johan Lindholm.
In 2019, the year of the corona pandemic, 50 top directors in large Swedish companies earned an average of 60 industrial workers' salaries. The crisis years have widened the gap even more quickly.
"This actually smells bad. I know how tough our members have had it over the years with all these price increases," he says.
Is it a failure for the trade union movement?
"We are negotiating and trying. We have had a good bargaining process on paper, and the members are still positive about getting real wage increases, although it is far from what we see in the form of CEOs' salary developments, which are far above the norm."
But does it matter that some top directors earn very much?
"It creates contempt for the establishment, contempt for politicians for allowing it to go this far," says Lindholm, based on what he hears when he meets with his members.
The gap between the bottom and the top has been trending upward throughout the 2000s, and further back than that. It was at its lowest in 1980, equivalent to nine industrial workers' salaries, according to the LO report, which covers figures dating back to 1950.
The CEOs' total income also includes capital income, which LO justifies by saying they are often paid with shares for their efforts. But it is the development of employment income, the salary, that is the main explanation for the gap increasing so much in recent years, according to LO economist Anna Almqvist.
