CEO’s Walk Away with Millions

In the last decade 21 CEO’s received severance packages worth more than $100 million. Meanwhile, I am covering a story surrounding a bakery’s closing without notice or severance for the workers.

By way of example, the report singles out 21 CEOs whose severance packages are worth more than the median US earner would make in 49 lifetimes. In the case of GE’s John Welch Jr., the figure would be 203 lifetimes. But you could still argue that the most outrageous example is Viacom’s Thomas Freston, who put in just one year of work for his $100-million-plus sendoff.

Staggering. Robert Nardelli sits fifth on the list after he left Home Depot a complete wreck. CNBC even named him one of the worst American CEO’s of all-time.

Just a few spots ahead of Nardelli on CNBC’s list is Al Dunlap. Nicknamed “Chainsaw Al” because he would cut the workforce and profit later. It is a common occurrence in the business world. Slash costs to make the company seem more valuable. That’s how Mitt Romney made his millions at Bain Capital. The whole practice is a plot point for the movie “The Company Men” with Tommy Lee Jones and Ben Affleck.

CEO’s like Nardelli and Dunlap, along with investors like Romney, look at workers as numbers on a spreadsheet. Not the human beings answering the phones, assemblying the products, or delivering the company mail.

“It’s the cost of doing business.”

A refrain all too often heard as millions of people in this country go without full-time work. The cost of doing business for the top executives in this country result in millions of dollars while leaving the people doing the every day work with next to nothing. The cost is not just a few numbers on a spreadsheet or a day of bad headlines for the company. The real cost lies in the pain, the suffering, and the struggle of American families.

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