GM gets pay cut smack on the wrist

GM has taken a back seat to other issues over the past few months, like national healthcare. Your worries are over, though, GM is back in the limelight. What for now? Effectively, the automaker has had a top executive pay cut imposed on them by Washington's former auto czar. In short, GM's CEO gets a slap on the wrist pay cut of 25% - down to a meager $950,000 cash salary for 2009. Now that's down from his former $1.26 million annual salary. This of course, doesn't include compensation from the sale of GM stock. While there are restrictions placed on Henderson's cashing in on personal stock, the fact of the matter is that even with the restrictions Henderson is looking good at making well over $5 million total compensation for 2009. Wow if that is punishment, we might see an onslaught of executives looking to sign up for the kind of punishment where you still make $5 million a year. Just ask, soon to be former Bank of America President, Ken Lewis who receives no salary for 2009 - nothing - nada - zilch. As for other GM executives, they get up to a 31% pay cut but the criteria for determining who and how much of the "up to 31%" will be imposed is not known or at least disclosed.

The part that always seems to get buried in the news segments, if covered at all, is how the employees of GM and the Bank of Americas are affected by their execs running their companies in the ground. You know what happens, employees get the job axe. They don't get media coverage, they don't get to vent to the President, they don't get a write up on CNN. Instead, they get to go stand in the unemployment line and wish and hope to find another job. Just ask the 120,000 displaced GM autoworkers that know this all too well. As if the 120,000 causalities wasn't enough, GM plans to eliminate another 1350 dealerships by the end of 2010. Eliminating that number of jobs is nothing short of absurdly ridiculous while the GM CEO gets a $5 million salary for 2009. This is echoed by the fact that GM had over two decades to build fuel efficient vehicles that would compete with Honda and Toyota vehicles but chose to build gas guzzling V8 vehicles instead. So while the current oversight of GM by the government is very much needed and long overdue, GM's executive pay cuts equate to nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Make those pay cuts equal to Ken Lewis' pay cut then maybe - just maybe the healing process could begin. After all, how many Americans get rewarded with job stability for poor job performance? You know how many. NONE!