By Joe Maniscalco

Yesterday, on the social-media-platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter, I noted a few interesting posts from the Work-Bites news feed referencing the UAW’s strike against the Big Three auto giants and a video clip of Starwood Capital Group CEO Barry Sternlicht, in particular, earning his money.

I really appreciated this clip because you rarely get the chance to see a CEO actually working. You can, of course, walk down any street in America and see all kinds of people working all over the place — paving the roads, maintaining the buildings, delivering food, teaching preschoolers. Walk into the right neighborhood coffee shop and you can catch me sweating over any number of Work-Bites articles [in addition to 10 other things]. But spying a CEO actually at work is a lot harder to do.

In the aforementioned clip, we get to witness billionaire Barry working overtime conjuring up a whole fantastic scenario in which the UAW’s crazy demands for pay raises are actually responsible for “creating the inflation” poor unpopular President Joe Biden “has to kill” in order for him to be popular again.

Yeah, I know — it’s loopy and sounds sloppy. But this sumbitch Barry is freakin’ brilliant at his job. You might still be wondering what is his job exactly. Well, it’s this — it’s this exact BS right here. And it doesn’t even matter that it’s clearly and totally BS. All any great American CEO needs to do — and has ever needed to do to be “successful” — is keep flinging his corporate BS — relentlessly. And that’s what our proud boy Barry is doing right here.

Let’s get back to him in a second.

Even though the answer was right under my nose the whole time, for a long while I used to walk around the labor beat seriously perplexed wondering what the hell CEOs like Barry actually did all day long to demand the money they got.

Barry Sternlicht is reportedly worth nearly $4 billion. I’ve always had a good idea of what other people did throughout the day to earn their paychecks — but I had a hard time fathoming what CEOs like Barry actually did in the course of a day to amass that kind of dough.

Truth be told, I’ve had many so-called “bosses” throughout my own career who’ve I’ve thought similar things about. You probably have, too.

I mean, obscene CEO salaries have been highlighted during every strike and job action I’ve ever covered. Several years back, striking IBEW Local 3 workers in New York City made it a point to drive home Charter/Spectum CEO Tom Rutledge’s disgusting $98 million pay package every chance they got.

“Really, what the heck does Rutledge do all day long to justify $98 million?” I thought. “What does his day actually look like?” No matter how many times I heard about that $98 million figure and considered it, I could never stop wondering what it could possibly entail.

I once met a union crane operator in Manhattan who was almost single-handedly responsible for raising up massive steel beams and girders through a dense ring of encroaching downtown office buildings to the top of One World Trade Center — one after another — all day long — without ever once killing anybody.

I’ve also interviewed nurses from all over the country who, no matter how stressed out they were, somehow made saving lives and healing broken hearts routine, daily occurrences. 

I know who I think outta be earning the kinda money Barry and his ilk are getting.

The boss over at GM is reportedly raking in $29 Million. The guy at Ford is at $21 million. The head honcho at Stellantis is getting $25 Million — what the heck for? You know it couldn’t have been for coming up with that brilliant company name.

Why was recently-retired RWJ Barnabas Health CEO Barry Ostrowsky pulling down $16 million during the pandemic; what was he doing all day long while New Jersey nurses were trying to make it through the next shift overworked and short-staffed? He wasn’t curing cancer — that’s for sure!

None of this makes any sense. Unless, of course, you realize the simple ugly truth of the matter: CEOs are really Class War Warlords — and their days are spent actively waging war on the masses while the rest of us just try to raise our families and be decent to one another.

Barry Sternlicht and the rest of the CWWs get the big bucks because they are great at waging class war. Their job is to relentlessly pillage and plunder working families — but do it in such a way that few fully realize what’s going on. They spin and obfuscate at every turn, they produce ongoing “narratives” that muddy the waters and cover their tracks — just like we saw Barry do this week.

“Anytime we have gone to the [bargaining] table they have refused to talk about anything,” an IBEW Local 3 member named Randy Cedeno once told me during the failed Charter/Spectrum  strike a few years back. “This company just wants to break the union — that’s all they care about.”

Yeah, that’s right, Barry — it’s working people — striking UAW members demanding a living wage — who  are really causing inflation and wrecking the country. Not you and the rest of the guys who cannot tolerate the thought of taking home a dime less than they did the day before and who actually have the power to, you know, set and control the prices for everything.

“Innovation” is still a word that looms large in corporate-speak. But the only “innovative” things the Class War Warlords like Barry et al. know anything about is how to squeeze the working class in new and terrible ways. You work for a living, you know all about them — charging fees for this, privatizing that, cutting here, there, and everywhere. Never letting any of these working class clowns or their dumb, stupid kids cut into your golden profits.

So, I’m glad I got to catch Barry in action this week. It was vital information. And it’s vital we all start paying more attention and learn how exactly these Class War Warlords roll.