Another interesting point centric...
They're probably as, or more oppressed than we are, in a prison without walls, social prison. To have to live up to that "status quo", and the GREAT expectations of their birth. Disconnected from the society for which they ultimately serve.(I know, NOT all, but many very key players.)
Too bad they don't/can't "think outside the SOCIAL box"...
Still, noone is worth x-thousand times more than the average employee of a company. The globalization coming will eventually, and maybe now is, going to give them "returns on their investment" to society.

Money ISN'T everything, and life IS short. What will their legacy to society be? That they made the most money in History, brought a company to dizzying heights, or improved the standard of living of all mankind...

 

If most peoples' goal in life was to do well for OTHERS, this discussion wouldn't even be happening...

As far as Old boys vs. "new" boys, a perfect counter example is Bill Gates/Microsoft. He took on the biggest "old" boys of his time and the rest is history... now he's making $20b/year donations and still has the most equity of any person in the US. centric, I know you weren't saying that it plain can't happen, but my point is we've SEEN it happen in our lifetime once, it's not impossible that it should happen again. So I wouldn't paint such a gloomy picture as you have.

 

Interesting takes on this subject - both sides.
Again, I see camps being drawn up where the views concentrate on the good of the company, or the views concentrate on behalf of the employees (blue collar ones).

I guess I have always (to this day) pulled for the underdog. Since I started life as one, the child of two underdogs (neither parent graduated high school due to social reasons - not of their doing), and fighting for everything you had. My folks both got GED's while working jobs. Father went on through trade school and became a certified Journeyman (Commonwealth of Virginia) Machinist/Tool and Die Maker, and my mom became a VP in the Mortgage Department of Wachovia Bank. My dad worked for several large companys (like Proctor & Schwartz, Stewart-Warner, and Gravely/Ariens) before starting his own tool and die shop in 1972. He incorporated in 1978 and worked himself crazy, doing sales, new business development, and still overseeing the technical work in the shop and managing the guys. Typically a 14-16 hour day for years. I saw my dad go without paychecks for weeks at a time to ensure the guys got paid and tools/supplies got bought for the next job. He and Mom took the guys out or had meals catered in for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we had fish-frys or hamburger grill-outs several times a year to show them appreciation.
Pop would pick me up after school and I'd go work for 2-3 hours in the shop before we'd go home for dinner. Mom did the books and payroll at night while I did homework. I was lucky to have the sense to listen to my folks when they INSISTED that I got to college after school - and I did. They paid tuition and fees, I paid living, meals, and utilities. I got my Bachelor's in 4 years, worked for 3 years, then went back and got another Mechanical degree in 3 more years of full-time university study - paid for it myself.

The point of this is not to brag or flaunt - totally the opposite in fact. I want to be recognized as coming from the lower classes and making it happen on my own, with hard work (and encouragement from family). NOTHING has been handed to me, and I have no problem with that. But I am not making $4.5-million per year either. Not even $1-million, unfortunately. I do VERY well as a senior engineer, and I am more than comfortable with my lifestyle, belongings, and self. My conscience is TOTALLY clear because I have not screwed anybody, stolen anything (legally or not), or been "favored" for anything that I did not earn the right way... honest, and fair.

STICK WITH ME HERE... THERE IS A POINT TO THIS STORY...
As an engineer, I design the process equipment my company uses to make it's products - all over the world. I am THE final say-so for design of certain peices of equipment - I approve it, or kill it. Part of my responsibility is being sure that the design is safe. We have some equipment that rotates at high-speed - there is a mandrel 12" in diameter, 54" long, made of steel and aluminum, with 40 moving parts on the exterior that weigh 3-4lbs each, and the whole rotating assembly weighs 660lbs when loaded (that's more than the whole engine in your car). These things spin over 7000rpm, 24hrs/day, 7days/week, 52 weeks/year, for up to 7 years straight. The interesting part is this - people stick their heads, hands, and arms within 6 inches of these rotating mandrels while they are running (to unload finished parts and reload empty tubes for the next batch). In fact, they routinely stand with their entire body less than 12" from these operating units. There are NO GUARDS... not possible. (I know what you are thinking... Don't ask - I went there too when I was hired, but what you must understand is that this process is such that starting and stopping the machines is not possible, so we have to work around them. OSHA has been our best friends for many years - they know ALL ABOUT IT.) Anyways - to make things interesting - sometimes, these mandrels EXPLODE, and when they do, they destroy everything around them... adjacent machines, building support beams, concrete floors, and of course - people. Our company had several deaths associated with these mandrel failures in the 1950s and 60s, and had our last domestic explosion in 1979 at a plant here in North Carolina. In 1980, this company implemented a safety policy that is modelled after the jet engine program used for airplane engines. We do maintenance tests, dye-pentrant inspections, and other NDT procedures on these units on a precise schedule. (I am also the global manager of THAT safety program. ) Recently, I designed a newer (bigger) mandrel to allow more product to be processed on a given machine in the same amount of time (a.k.a. "a productivity increase")... and I am installing 93 of these machines in China next month. Testing is done, analysis is done, and prototype is running - all OK so far.
KNOW WHAT IS ON MY MIND WHEN I AM AT HOME ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON...
Did I do all the calculations right? Did I miss something? Who is running MY machine right now? Do they have kid(s)? What if they are running MY machine and it explodes because I missed a calculation and it kills or mames them? Would there be a widow? What about their kids' futures? What will happen to them if I help orphan them? They will have a real uphill battle with no parent(s).... and so on.
THAT is RESPONSIBILITY.
THAT is why I get paid good money - and think I deserve it.
THAT is why I fight management to stop penny-pinching my design, wanting me to use cheaper materials, low-quality suppliers, and off-shore components.
I have about 2700 of these mandrels running all over the world - with people I have never met operating them, working on them, and in contact with them.

Know what I have to fight? Management wants me to cut costs... in the machines, the mandrels, the training, the inspection process, and even the safety program itself. I fight management to give me the time to go audit the plants' safety programs and report my findings (and there are ALWAYS violations when I get to do an audit ).

OK - end of rant/story. I wanted to paint 2 separate pictures for you...
1) Now some of you can understand why I am SO headstrong about management's involvement in plant activity and why I think beancounters need to stay out of certain areas of technical expertise.
2) Now some of you can better understand my personal position regarding the blue-collar working person. My folks were DIRT poor - had nothing to their name when they got married, but raised 2 kids of their own, and 2 more kids that were not even theirs, gave to the community, gave to employees, and helped anybody they could along the way. They still do... and so do I. It's my way of life. I give money, blood, time, and whatever else I can to help someone out, and I always try to place myself in someone else's shoes - for perspective on life if for no other reason. Travelling abroad has done more for me than anything with regards to seeing just how bad some people have it, and it makes me appreciate home that much more.

These clowns knocking down $5-million per year, with their golden-rods and parachute-clauses have NO MORE "responsibility" than me, or even the common mother who must somehow feed her children 3 times a day, and try to keep them clothed and healthy. There are many types of "responsibility", and many of them should be held above "becoming a multi-millionaire", and "keeping up with the Jonses". There are good CEOs out there too, many of them to be sure, but there are MANY duds who are just greedy money-mongers that don't care about the people around them and the people that they affect with their decisions and actions. THESE types need a labotomy IMO, and I'd love to nominate a few for the table.

Kudos to centric for the good-ol' boy post. Boy, have I seen THAT scenario in industry.

To close all the way back up to my opening sentence...
If a company will look out for their people, the people will look out for it.
Somewhere in the last 20-30 years, that philosophy has taken a backseat to "the company looking out for investors, so they (investors) won't abandon the company and run it into the ground." "People" used to make up a company, nowadays people are just "overhead" to a company, and are really seen as a bad thing. Companies have betrayed people's loyalty, so people have bcome disloyal to companys - and a vicious catch-22 has resulted that has people job-hopping for $.25/hour or a benefit, and companys struggling to get competent people trained and working for a decent price and benefit.

*Whatever happened to a company doing daily business for daily profits, investing in their future growth and development, and then passing the leftovers down to the stockholders?
*Now, companies just want to make quarterly profit estimates so investment firms wont sell-off their stock or lower their investment ratings.
*When you have big-wigs running these large companies that consort with investors to make this happen, and these big-wigs never intend to stay in a company long enough to live with the mess it makes, the situation gets even worse.

I say "no CEO's that don't have XX years with the company", and "CEO's get NO bonuses and only limited stock incentives for 3 to 5 years after taking office". It makes sure they have the company's best interest at heart, and takes away their incentive to "cut, chop, grab, and go" for 2-3 years service.
That should thin things down a bit at the top, don't you think?

Just another .02 in the pot. Thanks for reading (if you made it the whole way through)!

 

Short post...

VERY interesting editorial on Yahoo! News this morning...

Pension? What Pension?

"Today's executives with pensions show no interest in retaining their employees. Everybody below a certain line is replaceable. They would, if the law permitted, make three-quarters of their labor force temporary workers, with no beneficial hooks to keep them with the company.

If that seems short-sighted and antithetical to the long-range good of the company, it probably is, but modern CEOs hang around only long enough to get their money and get out. Their average stay is about five years, and then they're floating out the door on their golden parachutes."

Can ANYBODY out there associate with this?

 

I think what needs to happen is a regular guy (not specifically blue collar) needs to step in to a large corporation take the helm, and turn it into a real powerhouse from the ground up.

Disregarding stock holders, and looking out for the employees and the company.

Companies making any decision based off Wallstreet pressure, is completely ridiculous. Stocks go up, stocks go down. Stocks are a direct effect of a company and should not be a cause.

Someone needs to step in and take care of the little guy, and the big guy.



Large pay is a catch 22 as well when it comes to executives. You say, they are responsible for peoples lives so you pay them more, so they will have incentive to do the job. Yet that money creates a buffer between them and reality. No matter what, they are safe. If they lose their job, they have already made enough money, and know people in the club, they will be fine.

The problem is, the people in a company do not get choices on who they want to lead their company. It is chosen by the top level executives. There's no vote.

It would be fine if it worked well. But there are so many rich sons of rich parents who breeze through Harvard princeton Yale, etc because mommy and daddy went there, and also happened to donate 5m. They have the right pedigree and so they are chosen because of that, not their ability.

Would any blue collar worker be able to step in and run a company? for the most part, No. But most CEO's today can't run a company, either.

Proud, you say you have Responsibility, that's because you choose to. CEO's have responsibility, yet ignore that and do what is best for them, what is best for WallStreet earnings, and what their peers will agree with. If an Ivy League pure bred CEO took charge of GM and turned it around while decreasing all Executive level salaries AND bonuses to real world levels, do you think ANY other execute board would want to hire them?

 

Examine the AMF/Harley-Davidson split for a good example. The workers united and bought Harley-Davidson from AMF, and ran it the way THEY thought it should be run, and it has gone ballistic since the split. AMF ran it based on a P&L sheet, disregarded the product and the passion, and damn-near ran it into bankruptcy.

I couldn't agree more. They need each other to survive in the long run, but in the short run, the powerful (once corrupted or jilted - depending on your POV) have the opportunity to rape the business and profit from it, whereas the blue-collar guy can only punch the clock - he can't make the deals and decisions to close plants and such the way the big guys can. The little man is at the mercy of the big guy's honesty and virtue, and in todays world of greed, the little man doesn't have good odds on getting a dedicated leader that is capable, honest, and concerned about longevity of the company or his job.


Pretty sure we're saying the same thing here.

Good points. But riddle-me-this... If a CEO steps into a company (lets us GM since you mentioned it above), turns GM around while decreasing executive salaries and bonuses to fair levels, AND makes the company profitable, and gives promised dividends to shareholders on-time (regardless of current stock price), and keeps plants open and people employed and so on... why would that CEO want to go somewhere else in the first place? If the guy had all that going at GM, seems to me he'd want to stay and enjoy the perks that his leadership have brought - and he rightly deserves. And as for lower-level execs and upper middle-management, there are plants FULL of blue-collar people out there that are very qualified and eager for the opportunity to move up in the world, and will do it for a lot less than an Ivy-leage jock. They will probably be better workers, more dedicated, and more productive too because by the time you get a person to that level, you pretty much have weeded out the losers (or at least identified who they are).

Your point is well-made though, and I certainly understand it. The guy is making himself ONE happy home instead of several, so he would have no back-up if his plan failed. Hmmm... sounds a lot like a line-worker's or technician's problem to me. Maybe they are not so different, eh? What's good for the goose...

 

Proud,

What I was eluding to is that if that happened at GM, it would shake the foundation to it's core. All of a sudden, high profile CEO's would be looked at in a different light. A very intense burning light.

This will not come from a CEO who is one of them. It would only come from one of us.

Yes there is us and them.

If GM employees bought back the majority of the company, then ousted the Leadership team in favor of someone who would do the job to the best of his ability for well under 500k a year, and was able to weed out the leadership team, then things would climb like they did for HD.

 

Thank you. Applause.

If you're confident in what you do, and you're given the reins of the company to do whatever you want, you shouldn't need $30M signing bonuses to bring you in. Big salaries are the sign of a smash-and-grab, take-what-you-can-while-the-taking's-good mentality--and of a small, scared man.

 

I agree completely. If I could become CEO of GM. I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'd also be in it for the long haul. Especially if I got the results to make it the company it should be. Regardless of pay. granted I'd want more than 50k a year, but I would not want 1m a year or even close to it.

Of course the catch 22 is that if you are in the club, you don't think this is logical, and if you are not in the club, you won't become CEO.

 

They NEED; to understand "the" company, maturity in "the" company, and real incentives to perform WELL.
I see little incentives at "any" level to "perform well". Just do what the job demands or you get repremanded...(negative reinforcement doesn't work)
As described above gets a short term profit, makes shareholders happy, and they get out before the preverbial **** hits the fan. Leaving an even bigger mess for the next unlucky CEO.
BTW, our company is on its 3rd CEO in 10 years... yep, sounds familiar.
One, was said, merely to have gotten our contract settled quickly, and received $11 MILLION bonus, for a few weeks work.
This man would be a Hero, in todays industry, near a celebrity. I don't think he could get through the plant w/o getting his hand shook more than a few times. And I doubt anyone would complain about his salary either. But those kind are almost nonexsistent nowdays.
We must come to understand that, in the long term, our success is dependant on each others success, we are interdependant.

 

Now if we can only convince 1/2 of the people that own the over 500m shares to make me the CEO, well be fine..... LOL

 

I suppose a prudent clause on an executive hiring contract would be something to the effect of the bulk of your money is held hostage by the corporation until you have met/exceeded certain performance indicators for x number of years. Then again, like any "rule" or piece of legislature there's the "letter" and the "spirit". and people will find ways to exploit either one if it is to their benifit. either the exec wouldn't get his cash or the company would get screwed due to a typographical error (or some such non-sense).

 

my way of thinking to avoid this is to make them have to buy every one of the shares they get, or they get none. If entry level guys have to buy their own shares, so should CEOs. If entry level guys get 100% matched, CEOs should be able to buy up to a certain amount at 50% going rate. This way the money is coming out of their pay. If they don't buy any, that is telling you something.

 

A lot of good points being made in this thread and its really a very interesting read. I will throw out a few of my thoughts.

1. As much as I would love to run GM right now I really don't envy Wagoner anything but his salary. Having to answer to the stockholders and the employees is pretty tough. You can't please everybody and he seems to be pleasing nobody.

2. It's a little easier for Bill Ford to take a voluntary paycut because I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to see FoMoCo run into the ground on his watch. Not to downplay what he did at all, I think it's great and I think the GM execs taking a pay cut is a good move. As I believe someone stated there is really no incentive for GM execs to take a pay cut other than to show that they are willing to make some sacrifices. Maybe the Ford thing is an argument for the "old blood" not being such a bad thing after all.

3. It would be nice if these executives would work for half a million dollars but thats just not the way the world works. They pay these executives large salaries in an attempt to keep other companies from hiring them away and unfortunately end up paying them so much that they become disconnected as many on this board have pointed out. I really don't think there is an easy solution.

4. As much power as Wagoner has, he really doesnt have that much power He doesn't design the cars, he doesn't do the engineering, he doesn't build the cars. There are a lot of parts of GM's buisness tha Wagoner has no control over.

more later. I'm tired of typing.

 

It would take one person to step in as CEO of a major corporation and..... Well for example if this corporation was GM, it would take a person to step in and make 500k or less, and turn GM profitable, to the tune of at least 1500 dollars per vehicle, while increasing market share and lowering overhead and cost per vehicle in parts. Then other companies would have no choice but to take notice. In case someone wants to do the math, that's 13.5b on 9m units, but more with more units obviously.

If I were the CEO of GM, my mission statement would be this "I'm getting the company back on track, and finding out who is with me, and who wants to go home." For the first 6 months.