That would still ultimately be spun as greed and proof they were getting pay increases when everyone else was suffering - at least, that's what happened in the

That would still ultimately be spun as greed and proof they were getting pay increases when everyone else was suffering - at least, that's what happened in the UK when a bunch of CEOs didn't get their normal bonuses during Covid. This substantially decreased the total pay of the average FTSE 100 CEO that year, and once it returned to normal every news outlet ran articles about how their pay had increased by a massive amount in the last year alone whilst ordinary workers' pay had decreased over the last decade. Of course, it was really only their pay returning to normal after dropping substantially over the last year or two in a way that normal workers' pay had not, and the actual numbers in the report this way all based on put their pay at lower than it was a decade ago. Still, the press managed to turn them taking a temporary cut in pay that ordinary workers didn't suffer from into them getting an increase in pay that ordinary workers didn't get.