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More greed from the CEOS
07 June 2005
In my previous blog on CEO greed, I wrote about how corporate CEOs and other executives were siphoning off their unfair share - in great volume - of company money while killing jobs in Canada and the USA. And the companies were paying them huge salaries and benefits to hurt - even destroy - national economies.
In essence, they're getting paid for putting us out of work. They're getting paid for scamming us, driving jobs overseas, for selling out American and Canadian workers. Paid very, very well, too. They're leeches on the economies of our nations, worse than some viral pandemic.
And guess what? They're still at it. Today (June 7, 2005), GM's CEO, Rick Wagoner, announced a layoff of 25,000 American workers (see GM lays off 25,000 Americans.) Imagine: cut thousands of jobs, ruin thousands more lives and you'll get a bonus in your year-end pay packet! That's some system, eh?
Here's a good idea, Rick: fire 25,000 of the very people you want - you NEED - to buy your vehicles to remain in the black. You just told 25,000 Americans to go buy a Honda or a Toyota - you told them to have the same loyalty to GM that you showed for them. They'll tell their kids not to buy GM, their friends and families not to buy GM. Nice publicity stunt, there. Now most of these former employees you shafted will probably rather contract herpes than buy one of your vehicles in future.
Wagoner's salary in 2004 was $10 million according to the Detroit News. GM North America's chairman Bob Lutz and chief financial officer John Devine received cash compensation totaling $4.4 million and $4.2 million, respectively, for 2004. Looks like they're really hurting too, eh? It's tough to make ends meet when you make 400 to 500 times the average wage in your plants.
Wagoner's salary would pay for 400 workers at a comfortable $25,000 USD a year. The combined salaries and benefits of these three executives could keep 800 or more middle-income earners employed. That's 800 families paying mortgages, sending kids to college, paying for sports teams and new washing machines... or three fat cats whose only allegiance is to their own bank accounts.
Wagoner is quoted as saying,
Read that carefully. The priority isn;'t to make the best cars, or even better cars. It's profit. It's not safety, it's not quality. It's money. It's not to create a good, healthy working environment that will guarantee the loyalty of its employees: it's the return to the shareholders (which in turn means more money for the executives)
GM is "negotiating" with the UAW and other unions, trying to to significantly reduce GM's health care costs for its 1.1 million current and former workers and their families: that costs GM more than $5 billion a year. So the only guys and gals who make enough money to be able to afford the outrageous and escalating health care costs in the USA without a company plan want to cut it out of the workers' benefit package so they can make more salary for themselves...
By the way, that same article said Bill Ford Jr., Ford Motor Co's chairman and CEO, got a compensation package worth roughly $22 million in 2004. According to Optionetics Trading, the total compensation for Bill Ford and his top four executives was approximately $44 million last year, up 37 percent from 2003.
Now go google for "ford motor layoffs"... another bonus as bloated as the SUVs that wallow off the assembly line there... plants closed, workers given the boot, CEO gets more money... nice business ethics, Bill.
And you tell me a "free market" without government control is good for us? Care to explain how? Give me a single honest worker over a thousand Bernie Ebbers any day. Ebbers, former CEO of Worldcom, now lives on his 21,000-acre hideaway while thousands of small mom-and-pop investors lost their life savings when his scams were exposed. The result? He got his wrist slapped and families went bankrupt.
Justice? Equality? Democracy? Where? This is feudalism at its worst. I thought we had evolved past all those things Karl Marx complained about - but they never really left us at all. In fact - they're getting worse.
In essence, they're getting paid for putting us out of work. They're getting paid for scamming us, driving jobs overseas, for selling out American and Canadian workers. Paid very, very well, too. They're leeches on the economies of our nations, worse than some viral pandemic.
And guess what? They're still at it. Today (June 7, 2005), GM's CEO, Rick Wagoner, announced a layoff of 25,000 American workers (see GM lays off 25,000 Americans.) Imagine: cut thousands of jobs, ruin thousands more lives and you'll get a bonus in your year-end pay packet! That's some system, eh?
Here's a good idea, Rick: fire 25,000 of the very people you want - you NEED - to buy your vehicles to remain in the black. You just told 25,000 Americans to go buy a Honda or a Toyota - you told them to have the same loyalty to GM that you showed for them. They'll tell their kids not to buy GM, their friends and families not to buy GM. Nice publicity stunt, there. Now most of these former employees you shafted will probably rather contract herpes than buy one of your vehicles in future.
Wagoner's salary in 2004 was $10 million according to the Detroit News. GM North America's chairman Bob Lutz and chief financial officer John Devine received cash compensation totaling $4.4 million and $4.2 million, respectively, for 2004. Looks like they're really hurting too, eh? It's tough to make ends meet when you make 400 to 500 times the average wage in your plants.
Wagoner's salary would pay for 400 workers at a comfortable $25,000 USD a year. The combined salaries and benefits of these three executives could keep 800 or more middle-income earners employed. That's 800 families paying mortgages, sending kids to college, paying for sports teams and new washing machines... or three fat cats whose only allegiance is to their own bank accounts.
Wagoner is quoted as saying,
Quote
"Let me say up front that our absolute top priority is to get our largest business unit back to profitability as soon as possible."
GM is "negotiating" with the UAW and other unions, trying to to significantly reduce GM's health care costs for its 1.1 million current and former workers and their families: that costs GM more than $5 billion a year. So the only guys and gals who make enough money to be able to afford the outrageous and escalating health care costs in the USA without a company plan want to cut it out of the workers' benefit package so they can make more salary for themselves...
By the way, that same article said Bill Ford Jr., Ford Motor Co's chairman and CEO, got a compensation package worth roughly $22 million in 2004. According to Optionetics Trading, the total compensation for Bill Ford and his top four executives was approximately $44 million last year, up 37 percent from 2003.
Now go google for "ford motor layoffs"... another bonus as bloated as the SUVs that wallow off the assembly line there... plants closed, workers given the boot, CEO gets more money... nice business ethics, Bill.
And you tell me a "free market" without government control is good for us? Care to explain how? Give me a single honest worker over a thousand Bernie Ebbers any day. Ebbers, former CEO of Worldcom, now lives on his 21,000-acre hideaway while thousands of small mom-and-pop investors lost their life savings when his scams were exposed. The result? He got his wrist slapped and families went bankrupt.
Justice? Equality? Democracy? Where? This is feudalism at its worst. I thought we had evolved past all those things Karl Marx complained about - but they never really left us at all. In fact - they're getting worse.
