- This topic is empty.
-
AuthorPosts
-
March 26, 2009 at 1:11 am #660944
JoBParticipantEmployee contracts are still the first thing to go in a reorganization… that’s how many workers have ended up still working for the reorganized company that just kissed off their pensions and the majority of their benefits.
retention bonuses have meaning when there is a scarcity of employees.. but not so much right now.
March 26, 2009 at 1:14 am #660945
AnonymousInactiveNot AIG, but this DOES provide perspective from the other side – often described as “greedy”.
March 26, 2009 at 1:54 am #660946
alki_2008ParticipantJoB, for many of the ‘retention’ employees (like our own local “bank”)…the ‘retention’ contracts were put into place after the takeover/seizure/reorg in order to keep the employees that knew the company’s systems from leaving for more secure employment elsewhere.
It’s not just an issue of ‘scarcity of employees’. Sure, company’s could hire other people – but who would train those new hires and how long would it take for those new hires to ramp up to the company’s specific systems? Many of the retention employees are 100% sure to be fired at the end of their contracted X months, so do the taxpayers really want to wait for new hires to ramp up and then just be fired after X months…or just keep the current employees that don’t need to ‘ramp up’ and pay them a retention bonus to ensure they don’t bail?
The morale of employees that work for bailed out companies is bad enough. No matter what low-level role a person has in a company, the way they feel when people react to hearing their employer’s name can make them feel even worse. Someone at a bailed out company could be doing the exact same job role as someone at Google, and yet be treated so differently that it’s hard for them to stay at the bailed out company even with a retention bonus at the end of their X months.
The real crooks at AIG and the bailed-out banks are already gone and living it up in Europe or the Caribbean or somewhere else luxurious and warm. The employees that are left are just trying to piece things back together and ensure things don’t fall apart even more. Give them a break!
One last thought. Besides the imminent loss of their jobs, many retention employees (not just execs) lost lots of equity in their home, lost the value of their previous years’ bonuses that were given to them in stock shares, lost money in the stock market, etc. It’s not as though they live in some insular economy that keeps them from feeling the same effects as everyone else in the country.
March 26, 2009 at 2:20 am #660947
JanSParticipant“leaving for more secure employment elsewhere.”
I’m self employed, so this doesn’t apply to me….but…lately, I have had quite a few friends let go from their jobs, and they’re having a helluva time finding anything that smacks of more secure employment elsewhere…
retention bonuses? There are probably 500 or more people out there who will take your job if need be…..lots of people are finding that they’re no longer irreplaceable…so I’m not sure that I agree with that particular statement – lol…it’s almost like the employees are needing to pay the employer to keep them on…please retain me, please :)
NR..we’ll hear more and more like that. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t think that this will get past the senate. It was a kneejerk reaction, and not well thought out, and while I agree that something needs to be done, this particular bill maybe isn’t it.
JoB…that last paragraph reminds me that the other day some news that not many paid attention to…The big AIG logo on the front of their building in NYC came down…it was left blank, awaiting the new logo, AIU (the “U” for Universal, I think)…like changing the name will make people not feel the way they do about them…outta sight, outta mind…I thought it pretty funny…
March 26, 2009 at 2:28 am #660948
alki_2008ParticipantConsidering it often takes several months to get someone used to the specific systems that each company has, then by all means. If you all want the banks to continue operating, then you need the people that already know how everything runs. Trust me, it’s not that simple. When companies merge and their data systems merge, then it takes a lot of hours of work from the employees of both companies to make sure everything continues running.
Sure, hire someone new and see how long it takes for you to login to your online banking account!
March 26, 2009 at 2:43 am #660949
JanSParticipantfunny you sway this…I am a long time customer of WaMu…have been with them forever….and since Chase took over, it’s been awful, so I get what you’re saying. I know at least 4 people personally who were let go, and they weren’t “underlings”…one was a VP kinda guy. I am probably going to be taking my business elsewhere, and wonder if others are as unhappy with the new regime as I am.
These people have been replaced with others who perhaps have the same talents (from the Chase coffers), but there’s something lacking in the translation. And, lastly, I would assume that for these positions, if a new hire is warranted, they wouldn’t hire someone with no experience, or little experience…they would hire someone who wouldn’t require tons of training…just a random thought…
March 26, 2009 at 2:55 am #660950
alki_2008ParticipantYes – that’s a good example. The same will likely happen for Wells and Wachovia. It does SEEM simple, but trying to make sure that the ‘new’ bank can send a savings account statement or process a direct deposit for a customer of the ‘old’ bank is more complicated than it probably should be and really requires people (mostly technical folks) that already know the systems. There are so many processes that run hourly, weekly, etc to ensure customers’ accounts correctly reflect account activity…that NOT keeping the existing employees opens up a huge amount of risk and leads to frustration for customers. And those tech people had NOTHING to do with the banks’ problems.
Not sure about how things are different with WaMu after the Chase thing. I haven’t noticed much difference myself, but then my regular WaMu branch hasn’t seemed to change much so far.
I think it’s great in all these forum posts to assume that one job is equivalent to another job – but there are some jobs out there that really require specific skills/training/knowledge, and those are the ones where retention bonuses USUALLY are utilized. There are a few oddballs that seem to get retained just because they can sell themselves as being more valuable than they are…the bad apples of the bunch, as it were.
March 26, 2009 at 2:59 am #660951
beachdrivegirlParticipantalki_2008 kudos to you for explaining what I couldnt! Great job!!
March 26, 2009 at 3:16 am #660952
alki_2008ParticipantThanks bdg.
One other thought. The way the House bill is written, the tax is applied for households with more than $250k annual income.
So, a techie-type employee that didn’t play a role in subprime lending or anything like that and makes $60k/yr but has a highly paid spouse (lawyer, doctor, whatever) that pushes their household income over $250k will have their bonus taxed……while someone else that somehow played a role in the subprime mess and makes $110/yr with a non-working spouse will not have their bonus taxed. Just doesn’t seem right.
March 26, 2009 at 4:05 am #660953
JanSParticipantI absolutely agree…another reason that I don’t think it’ll get past the senate…the bill requires more thought than went into it, in my book..
March 27, 2009 at 7:05 pm #660954
alki_2008ParticipantI hope neither House nor Senate proposals pass into law. They just won’t address the real issues that initiated all the bills in the first place.
Also, I just heard (but haven’t been able to confirm) that half of the AIG bonus money went to non-US folks that won’t be touched by changes to our tax laws…so 50% of the bonus money will never come back to taxpayers, no matter what bill is passed. AND…Bear Sterns execs were paid bonuses in 2008, so those bonuses are already ‘free and clear’. :(
April 1, 2009 at 5:41 pm #660955
AnonymousInactivehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovSaVO78qS8
Couple interesting things to note:
1. NO “federal official” is above the law and exempt from being held accountable.
2. There is no such law called the law of “serving the public interest”.
April 1, 2009 at 6:10 pm #660956
AnonymousInactiveAlso, if the issue is that these bonuses were paid with taxpayer’s money, then shouldn’t ALL bonuses paid with taxpayer’s money be returned?
April 1, 2009 at 8:33 pm #660957
gunnerddogMemberI espeically liked how Barney Frank justified the bonuses by saying how hard the aides had to work. First of all, I’m not happy about the bonuses to AIG execs, but let’s all admit the story has changed since it first came out. When it first broke AIG was giving their people bonuses, the reaction was “Why are we rewarding people who got us into this mess?” Totally reasonable response. Who cares if they had a contract or not, if they screwed up this badly, why are they getting bonuses.
Now I think most people who have read up on this can agree that most of the people getting the bonuses are the people who have been brought in to help clean up this mess.
As I said, I’m not happy with the bonuses, but we all have to understand that this is how these people are compensated. If AIG does not offer these bonuses, they will not get good people. Forget the best people, they have already decided that going to work for AIG is a losing proposition. Espeically in thise line where once all these crap assets are unwound, they’re out of a job.
And for Mr. Frank, I am sure they will be working some long hours as well.
April 10, 2009 at 5:41 am #660958
bfranklin4206MemberApril 10, 2009 at 5:02 pm #660959
JoBParticipantbfranklin4206..
i don’t think it’s just our government we need to beware of…
we need to beware of a press that frames the AIG bonuses as contracts that need to be kept and publicizes the plight of those who recieved bonuses but whose two income lifestyle would put them over the income limits…
citing “essential” employees … if AIG is like any other large company i have worked for, the employees the managers “managed” generally had more day to day working knowledge of the company’s systems than the managers who were hired from outside..
they were hired more for their business contacts and their ability to generate new contacts than their knowledge of internal company procedures…
so one has to ask… what is so essential about them in the current situation?
Our press tells us that we must honor contracts giving retention bonuses to highly paid managers but ignores the fact that union contracts are contracts as well…
it glorifies companies that break excessive union contracts or reorganize to cut labor costs…
totally ignoring the people who depend on what is in most cases little more than a living wage.
And too often we buy this as good “business” sense.
the current popular notion of good business sense.. short term gain at any cost… is what has brought us to our current predicament…
i am left wondering why we are still listening to the “experts” that created and perpetrated and sold us this mess?
April 10, 2009 at 5:32 pm #660960
alki_2008ParticipantThere are plenty of non-manager employees that have “retention” contracts and would be affected by the proposed legislation. Honestly, the proposed bills are NOT going to affect the people who really caused the messes (post #36). The proposed legislation will affect a lot of people that had no role AT ALL in the demise of the various TARP companies.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of some unions. The Boeing workers didn’t do the company much good by their strike…and many of them are making more than a “living wage”, unless $60k+ is not considered a “living wage”.
Sometimes I wonder why people bother spending a lot of time & money in school/grad school/specialized training for particular high-paid skills, when they’re just going to get demonized for making more money than high-school dropouts.
April 10, 2009 at 5:40 pm #660961
charlabobParticipantDepending on their family size, and the definition you use of living wage, it could very well barely be a living wage in this area.
It is not the primary job of the workers to do the company any good. The company takes quite good care of that on their own. :-) It would be wonderful if enterprises were a cooperative of “bosses and workers” looking out for each other. But they rarely are.
I understand Boeing is now “threatening” to move their manufacturing to a southern (nonUnion) state. And Gregoire is desperately trying to come up with more tax-paid bribes to keep them here.
April 10, 2009 at 6:53 pm #660962
alki_2008ParticipantIt is not the primary job of the workers to do the company any good.
IMO, when workers say that they should be paid more because they’ve helped the company be profitable, then it’s those same workers’ responsibility to continue making the company profitable after they’re paid more money.
Striking employees often say that they should be paid more because their company is making money from the work they do. Using that argument, the workers should be concerned with ensuring the company continues to make money…otherwise, there was no reason to pay the workers more in the first place.
I think some people that favor all the “bonus taxes” currently proposed might change their mind if they knew the specific details of many employees that would be affected. It’s not as cut-and-dry as mass media makes it seem to be.
April 11, 2009 at 3:27 am #660963
JoBParticipantalki_2008…
American businesses became increasingly profitable after 1970 but the wages of those who work for them have largely remained stagnant since 1970.. barely keeping up with inflation while work hours have increased and benefits have decreased.
Making their company more profitable clearly didn’t benefit American workers.
However, upper management’s wages have increased at a rate far exceeding the profitability of their companies…
There is something wrong with that equation.
There is also something wrong with thinking that $60,000 a year is an excessive amount for the average father of 2.5 children in the Seattle metro area to support his family… or with inferring that the average Boeing union worker is a high school dropout.
I know many who struggle to give their children anything more than the most basic education and health care on Boeing wages.. and none of them are high school dropouts.
This idea that union workers are somehow society’s drop outs that somehow got themselves a good deal is one huge myth.
Wall street cheered when the airlines busted the contracts they had with their unions and reorganized. In fact, the bankruptcy judge awarded huge bonuses to the management of at least one airline after their “cost cutting” measures improved the company’s bottom line.
The largest savings came from busting the contracts with the pilots… they lost wage guarantees and their pensions all in the name of cost cutting.
None of them were high school drop outs. In fact, most of them were college graduates with at least 4 years of flying for the Armed Forces before they began their careers with the airlines. A very large percentage of those who lost their pensions just as they reached the age where they were federally mandated to retire were vietnam vets who had been flying since the war.
Excuse me if i don’t have much sympathy for those who might lose their bonuses after the US Taxpayer saved their jobs.
They still have jobs… we are paying their wages.
April 11, 2009 at 7:01 am #660964
alki_2008ParticipantJoB…sorry, this is a long one…
or with inferring that the average Boeing union worker is a high school dropout.
idea that union workers are somehow society’s drop outs
I DID NOT “imply” (not infer) that a Boeing worker is a high school dropout. The last paragraph of my prior post was a separate, overarching message. There are plenty of people that assert high-paid employees (lawyers, doctors, software techs, engineers, etc) should somehow subsidize the cost-of-living of low-paid employees…even if those low-paid folks didn’t make an effort to improve their own lives (ie, dropped out of high school). Clarification: The preceding sentence IS associated with the last paragraph of my prior post.
If you applied an association between Boeing workers and drop-outs, then that’s your own association. Please do not read insults into posts that are not “implying” what you assume they are “implying”. Thank you!
So, we agree that $60k is NOT a living wage for a head of household? How about $70k? Interesting that those folks making $70k/yr will be the same folks affected by the bonus tax. How? Well, since they sold their house in 2009 and will have a large severance package because they’ve been working at their company for 15+ years…then their AGI will put them above the threshold for the bonus tax. Buh-bye to the severance that you earned for your 15+ years of loyalty, and good luck competing with kids half your age for another job in the current economic climate. Too bad for you that 2009 was the first, and probably only, time in your entire life that your AGI will be that high.
The largest savings came from busting the contracts with the pilots… they lost wage guarantees and their pensions all in the name of cost cutting.
Oh…so it’s NOT okay for the government to break ‘wage guarantees’ with airline pilots, but it IS okay for the government to essentially negate the ‘contractual payments’ of financial employees? Interesting.
Excuse me if i don’t have much sympathy for those who might lose their bonuses after the US Taxpayer saved their jobs.
Does this mean you don’t have sympathy for farmers either? The government/taxpayers subsidize their entire livelihood.
They still have jobs… we are paying their wages.
Uhm…retention bonuses are going to people that will be losing their jobs at a specific date in the near future (and some of those dates have already passed for some folks). Oh, and they are also taxpayers and paid a lot of taxes since they are paid so highly…but wait, $60k isn’t high pay. The various bills proposed do not account for the differences between severance payments, retention bonuses (contracted bonuses for staying with their companies through conversion and getting laid-off on a specific date), and performance bonuses (not contracted/guaranteed and based on personal and/or company performance). If the government wants to cannibalize the “performance” bonuses, then have at it…but leave the other two alone.
And to all…a good night! :)
April 11, 2009 at 2:34 pm #660965
beachdrivegirlParticipantJoB do you have any statistics on your claims about profitability vs wages? I would really like to see statistics that also accounted for inflation etc. Does anyone else have something like that??
April 11, 2009 at 3:34 pm #660966
JoBParticipantAlki_2008..
AIG employees got retention bonuses guaranteed by contract.
while the auto companies were told that part of their bailout required them to break contracts with their employees and lower costs.
Same bailout.
The airline pilots (a similarly educated and possibly more experienced group than AIG employees) lost their pensions… including health care which was part of their lifetime employment package… and that was not only fine but celebrated in the business press because it was union busting and lowering wage costs.
And yes, they do have government guarantees on their pensions.. which start 3-5 years after they are required by law to quit flying and are about 1/10 the value of their pensions.
We are contesting retention bonuses at AIG, not severence packages.
As for what wages we taxpayers are being asked to subsidize.. it isn’t the low income worker.. it’s AIG employees with incomes over $250,000 who were paid retention bonuses.
I know it’s rough to be promised something that you don’t eventually get, but this is not some unique circumstance in our recent employment history… it just hits those with white collars and without unions this time.
i am sorry if i misread your last paragraph as part of your tirade against the unions at Boeing… but i am particularly incensed by the portrayal of unions as the cause of all business woes by the business media.. while they overlook the expectations of extreme profitability that fuel the stock market and the extreme wages paid to top management.. even if they fail. A Golden parachute is nothing more than a very large thank you gift for not doing your job… and the unwillingness (or posssibly inability due to inflated expectations of profit) of American manufacturers to invest in their infrastructure.
Nope, it’s the worker.. and if they could just cut wage costs and get tax breaks they could stay in your town.. or state.. or country.
it’s a load of bull and i am glad the retention bonuses at AIG have brought the subject out of the mire…
if restructuring and cutting wage costs is good for all other businesses, it’s good for AIG.
April 11, 2009 at 3:48 pm #660967
JoBParticipantbeachdrivegirl
http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig_03.html
tables and graphs from the Economic Policy Institute… covering a period from the mid 70s to 2005.
may i recommend two graphs for a good picture of wage and productivity comparisons.
productivity and hourly compensation growth .. it has median figures.. as well as averages…
Averages are higher due to highly paid hourly employees… median is what most people make..
and the graph showing employer provided insurance coverage…
beyond that there is some fascinating graphic representation of the disparity in wages between men and women and hispanic, black and white workers.
One set of graphs that i found most interesting is the one showing total average compensation compared to the one showing percentages covered by health insurance plans…
although fewer employees are covered.. total compensation has risen fairly dramatically… although health care coverage is not the only factor in total compensation, those two graphs really illustrate the rising costs of health care insurance premiums.
there were also a lot of articles listed in a google search for real wages in America.
April 11, 2009 at 6:00 pm #660968
rs261MemberI didnt look at the charts but a correction, median is the middle of the pack on wages 50% more 50% less, mode would be what the “most” people made, mean/average well, lets hope people know that one.
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.