When a CEO wants a pay raise they go to the board and say “look at how much these other public company CEOs get paid. You should pay me more.” The equivalent fo

When a CEO wants a pay raise they go to the board and say “look at how much these other public company CEOs get paid. You should pay me more.” The equivalent for a worker is pointing at pay at competitors or of their peers (or you know, producing a job offer for more pay by which point their employer has ended up in a worse position because the employee has a much better BATNA). The alternative is not for the worker to say “look how much the CEO is paid, you should pay me more” because the response is that the CEO does different work and their pay is set by different people who care about different things—the pay is not really commensurate.