Saturday, September 29, 2012

Still fighting over employment wage and benefit scraps are you?


Silicon Valley Mercury News/Pete Carey, 7/16/12. "Yahoo, HP, PG&E showred departing execs with millions."

Are corporate executives worth the cost to all of us?
"Call it the golden goodbye. Four of the Bay Area's biggest companies handed out $67 million to five chief executives who retired under pressure or were shown the door t
his year and last.

While these parting gifts were dwarfed by the pay of Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, whose $378 million topped our annual survey of executive pay and mirrored the company's stellar year, the money showered on some departing chief executives is seen by critics of CEO pay as questionable rewards for poor performance. 

.... Consider the outcry over a $34.8 million retirement package for PG&E's Peter Darbee, who left the company in April 2011 with the company's reputation in ruins after the deadly San Bruno gas line explosion and subsequent federal safety investigation. "Most of us would not expect to walk away from a fatal explosion that destroyed an entire neighborhood with $35 million," observed Mindy Spatt of the ratepayer advocacy group TURN."   Read Article. 

Note:  The picture graphic above is from the Mercury News article.  

Related - article and list of 498 top paid corporate chief executive officers. Forbes/Scott DeCarlo, 4/4/12, "America's highest paid chief executives, gravity-defying CEO pay.  The boss' take outstrips investor gains again. Did we learn anything."  "Our report on executive compensation will only fuel the outrage over corporate greed. In 2011 the chief executives of the 500 biggest companies in the U.S. (as measured by a composite ranking of sales, profits, assets and market value) got a collective pay raise of 16% last year, to $5.2 billion. This compares with a 3% pay raise for the average American worker. The total averages out to $10.5 million apiece. The value realized from exercised stock options and vested stock awards are the main components of total pay, accounting for 61%. The average stock gain was $3.2 million, up from $2.7 last year. Average value of vested stock awards was $3.1 million, up from $2.5 . Combined salary and bonus was up an average 8% to $3.5 million."

Posted by Kathy Meeh

10 comments:

Luke Skywalker said...

Did Yoda write that headline?

Anonymous said...

it's better when set to music

Kathy Meeh said...

"Still" has been added to the article title to help you focus, Luke (4:28 PM).

There has been recent blog scraping over what jobs are worth. So compare the job wages, benefits, pensions some bloggers are scraping over (including today) to an even larger issue: the total annual and exit compensation of large private corporate CEOs.

Such CEO compensation affects bottom line cost to corporations, consumers, investors, and to employees (who are paying more out-of-pocket for their benefits).

And, when these same CEOs leave one of these large corporations, the exit compensation is so much better than the exit interview you get.

Example, from the article, "Consider the outcry over a $34.8 million retirement package for PG&E's Peter Darbee, who left the company in April 2011 with the company's reputation in ruins after the deadly San Bruno gas line explosion and subsequent federal safety investigation."

Anonymous said...

Obscene in so very many ways. When our utilities start killing us and incinerating entire neighborhoods those at the top of the company should actually suffer instead of striking it rich(er). People are dead because of PG&E. Obscene.

Anonymous said...

So? The crybabies whine cause other people are higher paid. Waa.

Get off your lazy fat azz and go to work.

Anonymous said...

It's called a market economy, comrade. Are the same geniuses that want to decide what local landlords can charge in rent the ones that will choose how much companies can pay their executives?

Anonymous said...

Is Pacifica, the place where they knocked that wall down

Ya, the local hippies cry about the rents

Why don't the hippies start a program where they subside rents

Oh wait they get that at.Sanchez Art Center

Anonymous said...

What was this, the lost weekend? Toss out the empties and start the week fresh and sober!

Anonymous said...

The fog fest will save the townn

Anonymous said...

When?