July 23rd, 2009
Bankrupt Corp Fears Job Insecurity for Executives
Visteon, a manufacturer of auto interior parts and spinoff from Ford in 2000 with 30% of its supplies going to Hyundai, has never posted a profit in its entire existence. But it doesn’t stop it from protecting its nonunion “key officers” considered indispensable. For them bonuses, severance, and retention fees are necessary from the corporation’s perspective. To hell with the workers. Protect executives at all costs.Fortunately, at a July 17 hearing, the Delaware (yes the Michigan-based firm did incorporate in incorporation-friendly Del.) bankruptcy judge denied the plan for $3 million in executive retention bonuses for 50 corporate “officers.” Visteon claimed: (nonunion/officer)” employees perceive a lack of job security, potentially detracting from their incentive to perform at maximum levels and distracting them from their duties” and from the CFO, the reason for executive bonuses are to “ keep people focused on what we have to do to move the business forward.” The judge said that severances are not typically available unless given to all full-time employees. and “officer” status was ambiguous.
For severed union workers, paychecks alone were incentive enough. Union members are now asked to absorb cuts in medical and life insurance benefits.
Though Visteon has no money to pay long-term and annual bonuses, the company had the nerve to ask the bankruptcy trustee for permission to pay $30 million of the total $80 now. For its part, the firm is willing to delay paying executive bonuses. Isn’t that gracious? But Ford, GM, the UAW, and the case’s committee of unsecured creditors all filed objections to at least parts of the bonus plans.
For now the judge has denied superior treatment for Visteon execs. However, the corporation files one request after another keeping its hands in the cookie jar, begging for goodies, despite running the company into the ground.
250,000 autoworker jobs have been lost and these clowns insist on paying executive bonuses! A little job insecurity without severance or health insurance is what the executives deserve. They ran the company into the ground, causing pain for workers who did not make the stupid decisions that led to failure.
Even in failure, executives feel they deserve a softer landing. Have they no shame?
Tags: auto industry, Ford, GM, job insecurity, UAW, visteon
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 am and is filed under Employer Action/Inaction, Social Justice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Loading ...
I worked for ford/visteon UK for 23 years and was given 10 minutes notice back in March this year. The company visteon said they had no money for redundancies (layoffs) and wanted us to just go away. But we struggled for 10 weeks and finally got paid (peanuts) but now they can find $80 million for the top brass paid as a bonus for earning no profit for nearly 10 years. What about paying the shop floor workers some extra money or keeping more jobs.
Unfortunately, that’s not a surprise – In my past experience as a career corporate/commercial banker (which I left in 2004), there are two different kinds of leadership teams.
Let’s put it this way: One of the valid take-aways I did get from George Bush was the very simple concept of good vs evil. And in my experience with client companies: it was often clearly visible what type of owner and therefore management culture was inherent to the company. It’s typically easily spotted on a tour of the company premises by how the owner does/ doesn’t chat with the workers (from the guy sweeping the floor to shop floor and office people), the look on the faces of the workers, and of course the owners own style of communication with myself.
It’s been my experience that those owners on the + side are the ones considerably more successful.
Overall: A typical illustration, hence I posted this article on my FB wall.