$10,191,153 - Whose Salary Is This?

$10,191,153 in total compensation for fiscal year(FY) 2006. that is a big fat pile of bread! Who is the business mastermind that receives that type of salary?

Could it be Eric Schmidt CEO of Google, whose stock has increased from an initial offer of $85 in Aug. 2004 to well over $500 a share right now, no his compensation for FY 2006 was $557,466. you really have to read how the founders and CEO of Google receive relatively little pay other than stock options.

How about Jame’s Sinegal the CEO of Costco, the company that has the “bad” reputation of paying its employees good wages and giving them benefits while ranking #32 in 2007’s fortune 500,no his compensation for FY 2006 was $454,629.

No these titans of industry who steer their businesses to profitability and earn their shareholders money while being good to their employees rewarding their hard work aren’t paid even $1 million. The CEO who is paid $10,191,153 is Richard Wagoner CEO of GM. What has the fearless leader of the 3rd largest American company done to deserve that pay? Wagoner lead the company to nearly $2 BILLION loss in 2006 and a $10.6 BILLION loss in 2005, that’s not easy!! YOU’RE DOIN’ A HECKUVA JOB RICKY!!!

Whats my point? Well it really bothers me to see articles like this that don’t even mention the pitiful job management at GM has done only choosing to give this sentence in the 14th paragraph of the article as its mention of management misdeeds:

But aside from that, and the occasional obligatory gripe about high salaries and
bonus packages for the auto company CEOs

I expect this type of one-sided hack writing from Nolan Finley but this is the Free-Press, we deserve better! The article suggests a huge concession from labor at near $25 an hour!!(I work at GM and have no idea where the $75 an hour figure comes from but it is absurd at best!) since the article doesn’t mention the pay of the CEO of the company where “the reality is stark” I have. I will also show that in 1991 the CEO of GM made $1.03 Million, yes that is about 10% of the current compensation. By comparison if hourly were to be compensated according to the CEO pay raise scale we would be making somewhere in the area of $180 an hour in wages alone!

I am not calling for a massive pay raise for hourly workers! I am calling for the incredibly poor management of this company to at least be examined when we talk of what must happen for the company to survive. In the end our fates are tied together, if GM goes bankrupt a HUGE part of Michigan and the rest of the country will suffer greatly. I wish the constructive dialogue and businesslike approach that is mentioned towards the end of the article were what the Free Press called for instead of taking sides and offering the view that GM’s troubles were all caused by labor and can only be solved by labor. If that is the case I know where we could very easily save over $10 million bucks!