Dan Price, CEO of payment processing technology Gravity Payments, had a meteoric rise in the media when he announced that he would cut his salary so that the annual minimum wage in the 110-person company reached $70,000. For comparison, the annual minimum wage in the United States in 2022 is around $15,080
The announcement shook the waters and secured the American a legion of followers on social networks, from Twitter to LinkedIn. Only in this last social network, Price’s profile is followed by more than 783,000 people. Overnight, Price appeared in the pages of the New York Times, was interviewed by NBC News, and even did photo shoots for Esquire magazine. He even went to the “Daily Show”, in the first days of the South African Trevor Noah in front of this television program, after the dismissal of Jon Stewart.
The decision to raise salaries even led Price to be interviewed by the then head of the employment portfolio in the US government, at that time Robert Reich, who came to he dubbed him the “Moral CEO of America”. Right and left, social networks were flooded with posts by Dan Price criticizing the capitalism installed in the country and how “getting someone out of poverty is the most effective antidepressant in the world.” Even today, almost seven years after the decision to raise wages, the American’s posts are shared by millions of people.
While managing technology from Seattle, Dan Price became a true man of influence of the world of work. On Instagram, for example, he is followed by 277 thousand people, where he shares the maxim on his profile: “I only try to defend the helpless [alguém numa posição de fragilidade, numa tradução livre]”.
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Source: Observadora
