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Lenovo CEO Gives His $3M Bonus To 10k Workers
ndogg writes "Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing has decided to give his $3,000,000USD bonus to his workers instead of keeping it. Those 10,000 employees include receptionists, production line workers, and assistants. That works out to about 2,000 yuan or $300 per employee, which is about a month's worth of salary."
JAL CEO did something similar and took a paycut as well. Cold day in hell before any american CEO would do this. Even if one were willing, the others would kill him in the country club locker room and bury his body on the links.
That guy just earned himself some serious loyalty from the peons. Nothing says "I couldn't have done this without you" like sending a serious bonus down to everybody. The execs won't care, as that won't cover a day of their salary, but the people at the bottom of the ladder will appreciate it. Interesting that that came from a Chinese owner. I'd be curious to see what American CEOs think of that, and what their response would be to the question "Would you ever give you entire yearly bonus to your employees, and why?"
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I am on crossroad, from one hand we have:
1.CEO receiving $3mln bonus, not salary but bonus. On another hand we have:
2.Regular Joe's medium monthly salary of "$300"....
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So i wonder which one is worst, a company with so low medium salary, or a company with so much big CEO salary....
PLEASE, help me decide...
except their fringe benefits and perks might amount to six figures, and stock options give them a net in the millions most of the time. It might be a nice show of generosity, but it's also a nice way to have some PR and tax breaks for the uber rich.
I think that's so they can skip paying income tax, not because of generosity.
While they have a $1/yr salary. They still have stock options and other benefits that make up the difference. This is a tax dodge and not a show of generosity.
You are in fact correct, free market and pure democracy are similar; they both treat everyone the same, and they're both fucking mythological.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
As I recall, there's a lot of American CEOs with a $1/yr salary. I think Lee Iacocca may have started that trend when he went to work for Chrysler (or at least he popularized it). Granted, these guys are already filthy rich and can live off their assets/investments alone but it's still a nice show of generosity.
I thought this had more to do with tax evasion? Get paid through capital gains rather than salary and pay less taxes.
Yeah, this guy sounds like a pretty good guy. Except, of course, that his bonus is equal to what about 10,000 employees make in a month. Doesn't really make his company seem that great. I'm not saying it's not common, but it a good example of how messed up the system is. Do you really think that guy benefited the company, over what he was already making in a year, more than what 833 people do in a whole year?
Capitalism does not preclude altruism. Charity work has always flourished in capitalistic societies.
If he is directly responsible for keeping a company afloat which keeps 10,000 people employed, what is that worth?
And that is exactly the point! CEOs taking 1,000 times more than low-level employees implies that their activities somehow create 1,000 times more profit (or income, or whatever measure you want) than the activities of the lowest-paid and 100 times more than upper-mid-level employees. Or to put it another way, it implies that one individual at, say, $20M/yr is worth more than 10 of the next-best available at $2M/yr. I don't believe it for a minute.
$1/yr salary is simply a tax evasion scheme since wages are taxed much higher than the stock options etc. that they receive instead. These tax dodging assholes that won't pay for police, road maintenance or any thing else that is tax funded, even portrait this scheme as something modest. They make me puke.
I'd be happy with a company that thought on a 3-5 year time scale. 3-5 months seems more common (only the slightest exaggeration).
Exactly right and it all started when Reagan dropped the top marginal tax rate from 74% (I think) to 28%. High marginal tax rates encourage high earners to put the money back into the business including pay raises. Higher pay for people with normal incomes means more money to be spent in the consumer economy.
In the absense of triggering some government program that gives more tax reduction than the money given away, it is still a loss. He might not pay taxes on the money he doesn't get (because he had it paid to the workers instead). But that normally will be taxed at less than 100%. So he's still out-of-pocket.
IMHO what this says is that the CEO thinks that the compensation packages the company had set up ended up giving him too much, and the workers too little, for the long-term health of the company. So he fixes it by reorganizing it - and gets a boost in morale and some good press as a bonus.
He probably also ends up ahead long-term because the company does far better in the future than it would have without this action. But he also might be doing it because he really is an idealist and/or does care for his workers.
Either way (if he's not a compensated psychopath who doesn't feel anything much) he gets to feel very good in his eventual retirement.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way