Doing It Right
For the first time since 1950, Toyota is not going to make a profit, so it is making some changes to weather the GOPression. CBS reports that Toyota Cuts Exec Pay, Eliminates Bonuses.
It is doing a lot of other things that affect the pay of all Toyota workers, but it started at the top to cut costs. Apparently they aren’t afraid of losing executives, and they don’t think you have to put all of the pain on the workers. You have to wonder if that’s why they have overtaken General Motors as the number one car maker in the world. They seem to think that the people who actually make the cars are just as important as the people who make management decisions.
In Asian companies the people who make decisions are expected to feel the pain when the decisions are wrong, as well as benefiting when the decisions are right. The concept is know as accepting responsibility.
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I was reading an Airline Pilot’s forum last night after hearing that the CEO of JAL slashed his pay below that of the pilots after a bad year. Japanese call it ‘economic sepuku’ They talk about such things are honor etc. Yeah… a word I used to value above all else once. These days, I have to think about it first. Some people really are not deserving.*sigh*
Japan Airline’s CEO Slashes his Pay Below the Pay of Pilots
A while ago Mazda had a really bad year and the only people affected were in management.
The concept is so simple, and is the basis of all good supervision: if you take the power and the perqs, you get the responsibility. It is a founding tenet of capitalism and the free market – you have to take the risk to get the reward. When there is no risk, there should be no reward.
The head of every major bank involved in this mess and all of their associates would have been expected to “do the right thing.” [I think the haiku is a little much, and the sword approach a bit messy, so a drug overdose would be acceptable.]
I get really ticked off reading people, including some Congresscritters defending what these people make. They destroyed lives and impoverished people who assumed they would be able to retire comfortably. Let them live like the people they conned.
Some talking head was saying that we can’t nationalize something like Citicorp because no one in government could understand anything as complicated as that entity.
News flash: the people in charge of Citicorp and their minions don’t understand their company. There are plenty of people in government who understand the situation perfectly. The FBI and attorneys general in all the states have fraud investigators who are quite good at getting to the bottom of all of the variations of the Ponzi scheme when they are allowed to do their jobs.
These banks were hiding their losses, overstating their assets, and abusing their reputations to do it. They belong in prison, not in charge.
At least the CEO of Citi has gone to a $1.00 salary for the nonce. I think he’s the only one so far.
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I would like to see the structure of his benefits package before I cut him any slack. The bank may be paying all his bills and have a huge bonus waiting for him at the “end of the rainbow”.