Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, is known for moving employees to a $70,000/year minimum salary at the Seattle-based payment processing company, cutting his own million-dollar salary to the same amount in the process.
So why not someone like him for U.S. Secretary of Labor?
Mark Shields wants to know. In a segment on PBS NewsHour, discussing President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments, the syndicated columnist mentions Price by name, along with former Malden Mills CEO Aaron Feuerstein, as the types of business leaders who would be better picks than Trump’s actual choice, Andrew Puzder, CEO of the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. chains.
“I just wish once, when they picked a Secretary of Labor, they’d say, ‘Gee, who’s the best boss? Who has great relations?” Shields began, mentioning Price by name.
He then talked about Feuerstein, known for continuing to employ and pay workers after a devastating 1990 fire.
Shields continued, “Or Dan Price in Seattle at Gravity Payments, who cut his own salary by 90 percent to give everybody a $70,000 minimum wage. Just once I’d like to have somebody who said, ‘I really do care about workers.’ Puzder has been very successful franchising Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., but there’s no particular record of his consideration or concern for workers.”
Puzder told CNBC in May that the country could raise the minimum wage from $7.25/hour to $9/hour with “minimal impact” on business, but an expansion of the earned income tax credit would be a “real alternative” to raising the minimum wage.
A Gravity Payments spokesman, Ryan Pirkle, said the mention of Dan Price by Mark Shields was a big surprise, because Price and his team haven’t ever met or spoken with Shields. Price was profiled on PBS NewsHour in September.
Trump has already made his choice for Labor Secretary, and Feuerstein is 91 years old, so Shields was citing him and Price more as emblems of desirable characteristics for Labor Secretary, rather than actual nominees. But it’s a bold suggestion nonetheless.
Gravity Payments made international headlines after Dan Price’s decision, announced in April 2015, to raise the company’s minimum salary to $70,000 over three years and immediately drop his compensation — previously more than $1 million — to $70,000 to help fund the raises. Inc. magazine asked on its cover, “Is this the best boss in America?” Price’s employees bought him a Tesla.
This summer, Price prevailed in a lawsuit filed by his older brother and Gravity Payments business partner, Lucas Price, who had alleged that Dan Price abused his position as majority shareholder to award himself excessive compensation prior to lowering his salary dramatically as part of the $70,000 announcement.
Price has been celebrated and criticized for the $70,000 minimum salaries, but the resulting publicity has largely been a financial boon for the company. Gravity Payments said this summer that annual profits nearly doubled, to more than $6 million, following the announcement.
Shields’ comments about Dan Price begin at 3:25 in the video above.