Buybacks and Corporate Responsibility to American Workers

By: Senator Chuck Schumer

This month, Senator Bernie Sanders and I wrote an op-ed that suggested that companies be obligated to invest more in their workers and their communities prior to buying back excessive amounts of their own stock. This is an increasingly common practice that is designed to inflate share value, and it overwhelmingly benefits shareholders and corporate executives. It has also helped lead to a surge in the divergence between CEO pay and that of average workers. In fact, the CEO-to-worker…