Bernie Sanders Targets CEO Pay in Effort to Keep Spotlight on Workers

Mr. Sanders’s panel is also holding a hearing Wednesday focused on wealth and income inequality, which will include testimony from an Amazon.com Inc. worker trying to unionize at a fulfillment center in Alabama. The senator said he plans to hold another hearing later this month on corporations’ tax obligations.

“I intend to talk about the most important issues facing working families,” said Mr. Sanders in an interview, adding that some of the measures he pursues as chairman overlap with those he pushed during his two presidential campaigns. “Right now, I happen to believe that this country is on its way to an oligarchy.”

Some of his ideas face criticism from both centrist Democrats and Republicans, who say his proposals are unrealistic and costly. Republicans say higher corporate tax rates pursued by Democrats and a $15 minimum wage would hurt companies and could ultimately force them to hire fewer employees. A Congressional Budget Office report on the impact of a $15 minimum wage found it would lift many workers out of poverty but also cost jobs.

“If they raise [the] corporate tax rate, we’re never going to get back to the pre-COVID economy which was so strong,” Sen. Mike Braun (R., Ind.) tweeted on Tuesday.

Since taking over the budget committee, Mr. Sanders has helped to craft the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package and worked to include a provision that would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. However, the wage increase was ultimately ruled out of order for the fast-track budget procedure Democrats used to pass the law. Mr. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, also backs an infrastructure and jobs package that focuses on curbing climate change and has been in frequent touch with President Biden.

Mr. Biden has backed a higher corporate tax rate, a minimum tax on profitable companies and tougher tax rules on foreign profits. All face uncertainty in Congress, where Democrats have slim majorities in both chambers. Mr. Sanders’s latest proposal—tying a company’s corporate tax rate to its compensation policies—goes further. He says he hopes to build public support and then use that to pressure Democrats to back the idea.

“I am a grass-roots type of guy,” Mr. Sanders said. Three Senate Democrats are co-sponsoring the bill with him; a companion bill set to be introduced in the House has 20 co-sponsors.

Mr. Sanders’s bill would raise the corporate tax rate for companies with gross receipts of over $100 million a year where the CEO is making anything more than 50 times the median worker. The tax increase, on top of the existing 21% corporate tax rate, would add 0.5%, if the company were paying the CEO at a ratio of 50 to 1. The increase would top out at 5%, if the CEO makes more than 500 times that of the median worker.

His pro-worker push comes as Senate Democrats are trying to figure out how to pass their agenda in an evenly divided Senate. Vice President Kamala Harris can act as a tiebreaker so that Democrats have a narrow majority. They can pass a small number of bills related to the budget and taxes with just 51 votes, a process dubbed reconciliation, but most legislation requires 60 votes in the Senate for passage.

A $15 minimum wage, a bill making it easier to unionize, and a job and infrastructure package are all caught up in the Senate logjam amid broad Republican opposition. The minimum-wage increase and union bill would require 60 votes for passage, and both have already passed the House in some form. The infrastructure bill, still being crafted, could be done through reconciliation. However, some Democrats say they want that bill to be bipartisan.

Mr. Sanders and Democrats have already used the budget-reconciliation process to increase taxes on executive pay. The coronavirus-relief law includes a provision that takes effect in 2027; it broadens the pool of executives for whom companies can’t deduct more than $1 million in compensation.

Mr. Sanders has taken aim at Amazon.com Inc.’s labor practices, including last week saying the company was engaged in an aggressive union-busting campaign for resisting a push to organize an Alabama warehouse. He invited Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to attend the hearing Wednesday, but he declined. Amazon has encouraged workers to vote against unionizing, saying it offers some of the best pay and benefits available for comparable jobs in similar industries, including 401(k) and healthcare coverage.

However, Amazon has praised Mr. Sanders’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour—the level at which it starts workers.

—Eric Morath contributed to this article.

Write to Eliza Collins at [email protected]. and Richard Rubin at [email protected]