Companies and Brands

New Starbucks CEO Makes 10,000 Times the Pay of Workers

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: August 25, 2024 7:22 am

Last Updated: August 26, 2024 7:11 am

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• The compensation of its new CEO is about 10,000 times the median pay of a Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) employee.
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According to his employment letter, new Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) CEO Brian Niccol gets a private office about a thousand miles from the company’s Seattle headquarters and a private jet to take him back and forth.

Perhaps the compensation formula that will trouble store workers the most is that Niccol’s compensation is about 10,000 times the median pay of a Starbucks worker. The SEC requires public companies to disclose this every year. The exact ratio will not be posted until Starbucks issues its 2024 proxy. Reuters provided the current ratio estimate.

Starbucks workers are among the lowest paid in America. According to Glassdoor, baristas can make as little as $15 an hour.

One must ask what store employees think about the Niccol pay package. Investors may believe that it will increase the price of the stock, but that does not put money into the pockets of Starbucks’ lowest-paid people. Part of the company’s turnaround is to make stores operate more efficiently.

Some Starbucks workers have started a union, and the company agreed to bargain with them earlier this year. These conversations will become more complicated when the CEO makes so much and many workers make so little.

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