“It really is a mystery for us to watch your system and see
what is happening to the American worker.
Their pensions are disappearing and they are being made to take more out
of family support for things like health care.
In the meantime, American CEOs are taking in record levels of salaries
and compensation.
And when they leave,
even if the company is a disaster, they have golden parachute deals to take
with them.
We have to resign in disgrace
and dishonor.
Some of our CEOs have even
committed suicide because of the extent of the damage to the companies”
The speaker was an 86 year old Japanese Chairman and
CEO. He started his company 51 years
ago, collecting and distributing waste metal in Japan at the end of World War
II. His transportation for pick-up and
delivery was his bicycle. I have been
honored to know him for more than twenty years.
He is a tough, but fair minded CEO who is normally
enthralled by things American, but it was clear that the recent news about the
compensation package of the Exxon CEO, totaling in the ga-zillions, had set
this Japanese executive off.
It is hard for my acquaintance to understand why the Chair
and CEO of Toyota Motors earned just less than a million dollars per year and
the CEO of Exxon was getting hundreds of millions of dollars per year while
“Americans are experiencing pain at the gas pumps.”
The situation is hard for me to understand as well.
I have heard it estimated that since 1993,
the compensation levels of American CEOs have increased by 543%.
Can we, in turn, readily point to American
companies that have exhibited bottom line performance that approaches that
figure?
I seriously doubt it.
This same executive had made a courtesy call on me about ten
years ago when a major area employer had announced the layoff of several
hundred workers. His question, given the
events of the day, was very simple.
“What sacrifices, he asked, did management undertake before
they pushed all this pain down to their workers/”
Very little I had replied at the time.
The somewhat obscene levels of compensation for American
executives come at a time when the average person is being squeezed for health
care costs and retirement benefits.
It
contributes to a climate of growing mistrust about corporate
America.
It is fashionable among many corporations and businesspeople
to complain about government regulation, but it is precisely egregious behavior
such as compensation levels on the part of corporations and businesses that
invites regulation.
Restraint and
moderation, in times when all of us are being asked or told to sacrifice, is a
good way to show we are all on the same side.
I do not wish to leave the case understated.
Even though the Chair and CEO of
Toyota Motors may be
compensated at levels far below American counterparts, there are plenty of
“perks” to deaden the pain.
But, when we
start talking about individual compensation packages that annually total
hundreds of millions of dollars, those “perks” are pretty anemic.
It gets even more difficult for a community to appreciate
what the employer community contributes when good works are swallowed up in a
media frenzy about greed and corruption in corporate
America.
Global competition requires continuous hard work and
sacrifice.
Any CEO should know
this.
That CEO should also know that
success will most likely come when all human resources share in the sacrifices
and share in the victories.
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