I’m sure you heard by now the UAW is on strike…
But have you heard this yet? How much the executives get paid:
Mr. Rick Wagoner , 53 $ 1.28M
Chairman, Chief Exec. Officer of Gen. Motors Acceptance Corp.
Mr. Frederick A. Henderson , 48 $ 1.16M
Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Robert A. Lutz , 75 $ 1.16M
Vice Chairman of Global Product Devel. and Acting Chief Exec. Officer of GM Europe
Mr. Gary L. Cowger , 59 $ 858.00K
Group VP of Labor Relations and Global Manufacturing
That’s just their salaries.
How about these guys holdings (no offense ladies, but there isn’t any to mention):
MAJOR DIRECT HOLDERS (FORMS 3 & 4)
**ALL GM OFFICERS**
Holder Shares Reported
DEVINE JOHN M OWNS 160,516 SHARES
LUTZ ROBERT A OWNS 74,166
FELDSTEIN ERIC A OWNS 19,347
SCHMIDT PAUL W OWNS 19,036
REILLY DAVID NICHOLAS OWNS 16,137
I know, I know these guys have to put food on the table. They have a family too…
I’m sure it is all the UAW’s fault though, those guys are just fucking greedy!
I forgot to mention that earnings per share are at almost 10%. I mean, what does the UAW expect GM’s stockholders to do with a pissy return like that per share? That is crazy! If I were a shareholder I too would expect the UAW to fucking suck it up! I’m not taking a pay cut on my EPS! Greedy bastards! I had to work for those Earnings and damnit if people have to get laid off to keep me happy, so fucking be it.
Tags: Bush's Fubar Economy
The UAW has a $1 billion strike fund.
Boo hoo hoo.
Oh, FSP. You mean the union actually funds its benefits? If General Motors had to do that, it would really cut into the million dollar bonus program.
I assume the strike fund is to actually protect their workers, something big corporations wouldn’t do if thier business’ viability depended on it
google enron
But what would happen if the executives went on strike?
Oh. They don’t do anything.
“I assume the strike fund is to actually protect their workers, something big corporations wouldn’t do if thier business’ viability depended on it”
#1 – The UAW doesn’t have workers. It has members.
#2 – You think the UAW gets a raw deal? Explain why.
I think it was more the fucking incredible bonuses the Boards authorize for upper management. A million a year is fine for a guy kicking ass in the CEO seat. But add on another 10 or 20 million in bonus? C’mon.
So it’s just envy?
Yeah. Its envy. Sort of like Philippinos envied Imelda Marcos’ 8 thousand pairs of shoes. Yup. That’s it.
Who wouldn’t be envious of a job where you can collect a killer salary for not even being able to sell your product.
I will buy dinner for the person who can tell me who said this, ” no union is worth anything if it won’t go on strike, no company will survive if it isn’t prepared to take a strike”.
Every union has members who are workers, and every union should have a hefty strike fund or they have let their members down.
The last CEO we had at Delta who drove us into bankruptcy left with $16 million tax` free and while we lost our pensions the 45 senior execs in the company used taxpayer money after 9/11 to keep their pensions in a bankrupt proof account.
Let the confrontation bring the issues to a solution.
Have a great day.
Long comment, sorry. But check out WHO wrote this:
According to research published recently by the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, the 20 highest-paid corporate executives earned on average $36 million in total compensation last year. The typical CEO of a Fortune 500 company didn’t do quite as well, but at $10.8 million didn’t do so badly — that’s more than 364 times the pay of an average employee. Forty years ago, top CEOs earned 20 to 30 times what average workers earned.
Hold on.
There’s an economic case for the stratospheric level of CEO pay which suggests shareholders — even if they had full say — would not reduce it. In fact, they’re likely to let CEO pay continue to soar. That’s because of a fundamental shift in the structure of the economy over the last four decades, from oligopolistic capitalism to super-competitive capitalism. CEO pay has risen astronomically over the interval, but so have investor returns.
The CEO of a big corporation 40 years ago was mostly a bureaucrat in charge of a large, high-volume production system whose rules were standardized and whose competitors were docile. It was the era of stable oligopolies, big unions, predictable markets and lackluster share performance. The CEO of a modern company is in a different situation. Oligopolies are mostly gone and entry barriers are low. Rivals are impinging all the time — threatening to lure away consumers all too willing to be lured away, and threatening to hijack investors eager to jump ship at the slightest hint of an upturn in a rival’s share price.
Worse yet, any given company’s rivals can plug into similar global supply and distribution chains. They have access to low-cost suppliers from all over the world and can outsource jobs abroad as readily as their competitors. They can streamline their operations with equally efficient software culled from many of the same vendors. They can get capital for new investment on much the same terms. And they can gain access to distribution channels that are no less efficient, some of them even identical.
So how does the modern corporation attract and keep consumers and investors (who also have better and better comparative information)? How does it distinguish itself? More and more, that depends on its CEO — who has to be sufficiently clever, ruthless and driven to find and pull the levers that will deliver competitive advantage.
There are no standard textbook moves, no well-established strategies to draw upon. If there were, rivals would already be using them. The pool of proven talent is small because so few executives have been tested and succeeded. And the boards of major companies do not want to risk error. The cost of recruiting the wrong person can be very large — and readily apparent in the deteriorating value of a company’s shares. Boards are willing to pay more and more for CEOs and other top executives because their rivals are paying more and more for them. Former Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli to the contrary notwithstanding, the pay is usually worth it to investors.
The proof is in the numbers. Between 1980 and 2003, the average CEO in America’s 500 largest companies rose sixfold, adjusted for inflation. Outrageous? Not to investors. The average value of those 500 companies also rose by a factor of six, adjusted for inflation. In 2005, for example, Exxon Mobil reported $36 billion in profits. Its former chairman, Lee R. Raymond, retired that year with a compensation package totaling almost $400 million, including stock, stock options and long-term compensation. Too much? Not to Exxon’s investors, who enjoyed a 223% return over the interval, compared to the average 205% return received by shareholders of other oil companies, a premium of about $16 billion. Raymond took home just 4% of that $16 billion.
As the economy has shifted toward supercapitalism, CEOs have become less like top bureaucrats and more like Hollywood celebrities who get a share of the house. Hollywood’s most popular celebrities now pull in around 15% of whatever the studios take in at the box office. Clark Gable earned $100,000 a picture in the 1940s, roughly $800,000 in present dollars. But that was when Hollywood was dominated by big-studio oligopolies. Today, Tom Hanks makes closer to $20 million per film.
Movie studios — now competing intensely not only with one another but with every other form of entertainment — willingly pay these sums because they’re still small compared to the money these stars bring in and the profits they generate. Today’s big companies are paying their CEOs mammoth sums for much the same reason.
If you assume shareholders would rein in CEO pay, take a look at the United Kingdom. Since 2003, changes in British securities law have given investors more say over what British CEOs are paid. Nonetheless, executive pay there has continued to skyrocket, on the way to matching the pay of American CEOs.
Companies listed on the London stock market have done sufficiently well that British investors don’t care what CEOs are paid. Full disclosure with shareholder approval might make it harder for a CEO to claim to be worth it if his company’s shares have lost ground during his tenure or risen no more than the average share prices of other companies in the same industry. But given the intensity of competition for star performers, disclosure and approval might cause CEO pay to soar even higher.
This economic explanation for sky-high CEO pay does not justify it socially or morally. It only means that investors think CEOs are worth it. As citizens, though, most of us disapprove. About 80% of Americans polled by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg in early 2006 said CEOs are overpaid. The reaction was roughly the same regardless of the respondent’s income or political affiliation. But if America wants to rein in executive pay, the answer isn’t more shareholder rights. Just as with the compensation of Hollywood celebrities or private-equity and hedge fund managers, the answer — for anyone truly concerned — is a higher marginal tax rate on the super pay of those in super demand.
Mr. Reich, professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and former U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, is author of the just-published “Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life” (Alfred A. Knopf).
so if you buy the dinner, does that mean we have to sit down and eat it with you?
I doubt you have the answer so your question is moot.
Have a great day.
I may not have the answer, but it may be what is holding other back 🙂
I was thinking hoffa myself