Big Three CEOs To Take $1 A Year Salaries If Their Companies Get Bailed Out (POLL)

Now that Americans have footed the bill for more than a trillion dollars in bailouts, Congress is finally starting to clamp down on executive pay as a condition for a bailout.

AP reports, "Some members of Congress have urged the Big Three executives to take major pay cuts as part of the deal. Chrysler Chief Executive Robert Nardelli said he would work for $1 a year, and a similar commitment is expected from GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Ford plans to include a pay cut for Ford CEO Alan Mulally, although the size of the cut was not immediately available."

Just this morning, Ford's CEO said he would take $1 a year in pay if Ford got bailed out. Chrysler and GM's CEOs joined the salary-reduction pledge as well.

Ford Motor Co. will tell Congress that it plans to return to a pretax profit or break even in 2011 when its CEO appears before two legislative committees this week.

Also, CEO Alan Mulally said he'll work for $1 per year if the automaker has to take any government loan money.

The plan Ford is presenting to Congress this week also says it will cancel all management employees' 2009 bonuses and will not pay any merit increases for its North American salaried employees next year.

Other cost-cutting actions include a plan to sell Ford's five corporate aircraft, the company said.

Take our poll and tell us if you think this a good policy for all bailed out companies:

Quick Poll

Should CEOs Who Are Getting Bailed Out Forfeit A Salary?

YES

NO

Comments

[ramal]

Fired period and forced to give up all assests and live out the remainder of their life's on Social Security and food stamps.

[Twinkie]

Great idea! I'm sure they'd be able to hire new ppl at $1 a year.

[aweissnet]

Think I'll go to sleep and dream on that one.

[imusintheevening]

They should be fired, period.

[djsi]

I don't think majority of their income is from their salaries.

[mtflyer]

They should be forced to give up their stock, options, planes, etc. i.e. everything except one car(the same junk they sold us), one house(make them mortgage that), send their kids to public school or make them work their way through college, liquidate their bank accounts, including illegal offshore ones to what an assembly line worker makes in a year, and then make them work a minimum wage job for a year & see how they fare. Otherwise just send them to a REAL prison, not the country-club kind we have been running. Somewhat complicated, but they're worth it. Better than the $1 deal where they get to keep what they have stolen during their tenure. Wouldn't it be great to do the same thing to the slugs in Congress who have robbed us even more with the bailouts to the crooks on Wall Street!

[Twinkie]

*sigh* if the bailouts hadn't been done for the financial sector the stock market would have lost trillions more than the money saved. More people would now be out of work and the recession would be going deeper and longer. That's how the real world works.

[aweissnet]

Not really.

[dswagz]

No. They're not worth a buck a year. They should also be forced to pay back their bonuses form the last two or three years as well.

These guys should be forced aside.
They have failed and Badly, and need to join the other failed workers who lose their jobs due to incompetence. That's how it works in the real world, guys.

[gmlaster]

Excellent point! I totally agree.

[Rep0X]

CEOs 'don't have' salaries..­.! They have stocks and bonuses... The annual salaries are peanuts in comparison­...

[NWBrunette]

Their TOTAL compensation (bonuses, free tuition for kids, interest free loans for fancy cars, no mooring fee for the yacht, etc, etc, etc...) should be zero for this year, the 2 years previous and the following three years. Once the bailout money is paid back in full with interest, then they can get a salary again, but it can be no more than 50 times the lowest paid full-time worker. And if they gripe about it, then they have to clean the toilets for 10 randomly selected employees for a month. Get it all in writing, signed sealed and delivered before a dime of taxpayer money even looks in their direction. Thanks for listening.

[quadgemini]

Not just CEOs, but all senior execs and board members. To be fair, let them have TOTAL COMPENSATION equal to that of their lowest-paid full-time employee.

[elimenez]

To be fair this should be across the board. The financial industry needs to do the same. AIG execs, Citigroup, and all banks that received a cent of the bailout money should make their CEO's forego salary. NO pay until you dig us out of the mess you caused!

[NoMoreFreepers]

Great idea! The feds should have made this a mandatory condition for each and every institution they bailed out before handing over ONE RED CENT.

The question is - how can these CEO's be forced to comply if their company's bailout is already in effect? The deed is done and they've already received the monies!

[SWF4Change]

http://www.theengineofdemocracy.com/facts.html

[hortonhearsawho]

75 cents and I will take the CEO job...just trying to help.

[SocialConscience]

This dollar salary proposal is just another part of the dog and pony show, along with electing to drive to any future Congressional meetings to grovel for money. They'll tuck that Lear jet back in the hangar until the taxpayers' memories get fuzzy again. Pay them a salary that is ~200 - 300K, but they get NO bonuses, NO stock options, NO results based incentives until they actually produce results. If there are no measurable, favorable results in a year, several tiers of management need to go. I can't help but remember the GM executive who stated sometime around 2002 that hybrid cars would be a flash in the pan, going the way of the dodo. The gas mileage of the Big 3's cars continue to be abyssmal. Go to your local car show and see for yourself. In a word, these companies have been out-of-touch for an extended period of time, and they have yet to demonstrate the acumen to right this ship.

[SocialConscience]

Had to find that article from NYT: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E2D7143AF932A25751C1A9649C8B63

With regard to the viability of hybrids:

"''I don't think anybody's got confidence that the economics make any sense,'' Rick Wagoner, G.M.'s chief executive, said in a recent interview.­"

Wagoner has been CEO for the past 8 years...co­incidence.­..you decide.

[killpack]

This isn't going to solve the problem. So the CEOs aren't going to get paid millions of dollars per year. SO WHAT!!! These automakers will STILL lose BILLIONS of dollars a year!!! That is with TAXPAYER money! You've got to be kidding me! I will never endorse this. I just wrote my Senators AGAIN requesting that it not happen.

[stuckintx]

I concur. I am highly against this bailout for the same reasons. The prognosis for the big 3 is terminal, and it's their own stubborn fault.

[gmlaster]

The truth is that the Big 3 are not going to survive this. This problem is not a new one. It's the result of years spent building crap and laughing all the way to the bank because we kept buying it.

It's not the employees' fault. They can only build what the engineers design. But for years they built total crap that constantly broke down, and we bought it because we wanted to buy American. Half the men in my family worked for Chrysler, and they spent just about every weekend fixing their cars. Then the Japanese came here and flooded the market with cheap, fuel-efficient, reliable cars and suddenly the Big 3 found themselves selling crap while the Japanese were selling really nice cars. They never recovered and have been playing catch-up ever since.

It's going to go on that way until they finally build a car that people are dying to buy. When GM cars put Toyota and Honda to shame in appearance, price and performance, they'll start turning a profit. Since that's probably not going to happen, the only reason to bail them out now is to keep from having 3 million new unemployment claims. Other than that, they're already dead. They just don't know it yet.

[emstrem]

May all of you wanting to drive foreign fuel efficient cars get hit by a semi on the highway with no health insurance. We'll see how you like it then when the hospital throws you out in the street at 2:00 AM, and then garnishes your wages at the job you get owned by some foreign conglomerate when you get on your feet...KAR­MA.

[stuckintx]

Dubya? Is that you?

[motodude]

Fuld, the chairman Lehman Bros. walked away with $172 million after destroying his company. These CEOs make tons of money and they should have enough saved so that a year without salary for symbolic sake is fine. Really things are so out of whack that many on Wall St are getting bonuses in this year of record losses. It shows the extreme level decadence and total lack of basic moral integrity at work in the highest echelons of our nation. Rampant unchecked decadence and corruption. Rewards for massive and systematic failure. We are so far down the hole I am not sure even Obama will be able to bring us up enough to see the light.

[MouthFountain]

I say we let them sink or swim. Ford will probably make it. Au revior GM and Chrysler..­. Who killed the electric car indeed.