Hmmm. I wouldn’t have thought that this could happen, not with President Obama running Government General Motors. From 
GM Chief to Get $1.7 Million Pay
By Sharon TerlapGeneral Motors Co. Chief Executive Ed Whitacre will receive a pay package valued at $9 million to help turn around the government-owned auto maker, according to a regulatory filing.
Mr. Whitacre, according to the filing, will receive a $1.7 million base salary this year. The rest of his compensation is comprised of $5.3 million in stock available to him beginning in 2012 and restricted stock units valued currently at $2 million.
The auto maker will pay former-CEO Frederick “Fritz” Henderson $59,090 a month beginning this week for consulting on international operations. The consulting deal surprised some GM executives. Mr. Henderson has not been working for the company since he resigned under pressure from the GM board.
Mr. Whitacre became the auto maker’s full-time CEO last month following a short stint as acting chief. Mr. Whitacre was GM’s chairman at the time and continues in that role. He does not receive additional pay for his work as chairman of the board.
Because GM is subject to restrictions on pay the U.S. imposed on companies it bailed out, U.S. Treasury pay czar Kenneth Feinberg had to approve the package.
Mr. Whitacre had said in December that the government’s pay restrictions were making it difficult for GM to find a suitable candidate for CEO.
Mr. Henderson’s pay as CEO had been set at $5.5 million, including a $1.3 million annual salary. Mr. Henderson’s commitment to GM is relatively flexible. According to Friday’s filing, he is expected to provide about 20 hours of consulting a month and meet once a month with the head of GM’s international operations. He is free to work for other companies as long as they don’t compete with GM.
Mr Whitaker’s pay is many times larger than President Obama’s salary, though the President does get some rather significant perks. 
But what’s really interesting is that Mr Henderson will be pulling down $709,080 a year — also more than President Obama’s base salary — for “about 20 hours of consulting a month and meet(ing) once a month with the head of GM’s international operations.”
Heck, I can save GM money: I will promise “about 20 hours of consulting a month and meet(ing) once a month with the head of GM’s international operations” for a measly $500,000 a year!
In fact, I’ll even give them some consulting, right now, ahead of my first paycheck: hire an entirely new engineering staff, revamp your engineering and quality control from bottom to top, and try to build cars that aren’t pieces of junk, and then you’ll start to reclaim some of your lost market share.
I have a way to save GM loads of money without even gaining market share. Actually two ways.
1) Get the fed out of GM’s boardroom once and for all.
2) Turn Meatchicken into a right-to-work state.
Those two steps alone will vastly improve GM’s bottom line without any market-share improvement. But those two steps alone would cause market-share improvement.
In fact, I’ll even give them some consulting, right now, ahead of my first paycheck: hire an entirely new engineering staff, revamp your engineering and quality control from bottom to top, and try to build cars that aren’t pieces of junk, and then you’ll start to reclaim some of your lost market share.
Considering the going rate, should you really be offering good advice for free on your website?
And as much as I generally like unions in theory, John’s right that the stubbornness of the UAW is part of GM’s problem. One would think that working with management in order to save the company benefits everyone, right? I’m honestly surprised that the UAW apparently learned nothing from the Eastern Airlines strike and subsequent collapse…
I hate unions, despise them in fact (despite my previous position as 3rd shift union steward). They disrupt market competitivity; they cause companies to keep unemployables on their payroll; they cause companies to sacrifice the future for the now; they require an adversarial situation between management and the work-force; they prevent employer-employee negotiations outside the “collective.”
That being said, there is a time and place for unions, theoretically speaking. The time is almost fully in the past and the place is with intransigent corporations. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “I hate unions but this company (my previous job) needs a much stronger union.” I found it wholly ironic that my previous employer was top-down liberal. Everyone from the owner to the presidents to the plant managers to the non-fired department heads and supervisors to 99 percent (no exaggeration) of the work-force were liberals. And it was a work-place everyone loved to hate (generally speaking), from previous presidents to previous supervisors to previous and current workers. Nobody was treated with respect and everyone knew he or she was replaceable by the next person who came through the door.
If unions had to compete in an open market, most would die and the rest would adapt. And, I believe, everyone would be much better off. The time for unions has, for the most part, come and gone. They have no positive impact on the business atmosphere and they busily poison themselves, bringing all the periphery down with them.
Speaking of union issues, DRJ linked to another site and excerpted it.
You seem to be engaging in a little bit of class consciousness there, Dana.
Two questions:
i, How does this compensation compare to that of other CEOs?
ii, Does CEO compensation actually reflect their performance?
Jeff: “I’m honestly surprised that the UAW apparently learned nothing from the Eastern Airlines strike and subsequent collapse…”
Oh, but the UAW made major concessions to enhance the survival of GM and their jobs!
Class consciousness? No, that’s not me. What I am pointing out is hypocrisy. I really don’t care what the CEOs of Ford and IBM and other companies make; that’s their business. I am pointing out that the federal government rescued — and took 61% ownership in — General Motors, and we were told that things would be different, but it sure looks like nothing has changed.
I have grown to detest the exclamation point (!) because it is used so willy-nilly that it no longer has any value. I really wish people would forget that literary device existed. It detracts from, rather than adding to, the commentary to which it is attached.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/print_668089.html
Loving Labor
By Kevin Hassett
Sunday, February 21, 2010
WASHINGTON
President Barack Obama’s union with labor unions has become a marriage made in hell. If he wants to save his presidency, and his party, he should seek a divorce.
When Obama met with House Republicans last month, he chastised them for mischaracterizing his health-care agenda. “You’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot,” he said. It’s not, of course, but Republicans can be forgiven for observing the truth that this president has been more in the tank for the labor movement than any president since World War II.
It certainly has made great financial sense for the president to align himself with the unions. After all, organized labor spent more than $100 million in the last election supporting Democrats. And for unions, the investment looks like a good one. Since taking office, Obama has doggedly pursued their agenda.
Read it all here, or at the link above:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33248.html
Toyota: Dems ‘not industry friendly’
Internal Toyota documents derided the Obama administration and Democratic Congress as “activist” and “not industry friendly,” a revelation that comes days before the giant automaker’s top executives testify on Capitol Hill amid a giant recall.
According to a presentation obtained under subpoena by the House Oversight and Government Relations committee, Toyota referred to the “changing political environment” as one of its main challenges and anticipated a “more challenging regulatory” environment under the Obama administration’s purview.
This document, in addition to piles of other records, will be front and center this week as the Japanese automaker girds to face lawmakers hungry for answers about a recall that has the company teetering.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33248.html#ixzz0gDT2et8T
I really don’t care what the CEOs of Ford and IBM and other companies make; that’s their business. I am pointing out that the federal government rescued — and took 61% ownership in — General Motors, and we were told that things would be different, but it sure looks like nothing has changed.
So you’re saying you want GM to be run professionally, but you don’t think the government should pay salaries comparable to those of other CEOs?
Is there a pool of people with the skills necessary to run huge companies who are willing to work for, what, the $100,000 or so you might think is reasonable? Where are they?
For once, I agree with you, but I’m not sure even if you paid the CEO a billion dollars he could turn GM around. Too many years of mediocre cars, of focusing on cost cutting instead of quality and design excellence have hurt their reputation with the public and killed market share.
Rather than bail the company out, perhaps the better solution would have been to separate it into different independent components. Cadillac seems to be making some decent products and the Chevy Corvette is a world class sports car, but most of the rest are boring and uninspired. They could have learned from Honda and BMW on how to build great cars, but decades of bureaucratic stagnation and complacency pretty much killed off that option.
Well, Pho, there’s the rub: President Obama and the Democrats were saying that top executives are being paid way, way too much, and even created a “pay tsar” to regulate those things, yet, amazingly enough, when they go to run a company, they decided that they needed to pay those previously outrageous salaries.
Yes, it’s almost as if Obama and the Democrats are actually centre-right politicians engaged primarily in propping up an increasing dysfunctional American plutocratic system with only a veneer of concern for average Americans. Which would make the Republicans the far-right, the teabaggers simply gullible dupes, and no organised party actually supporting the interests of the vast majority of Americans…
But that can’t be the case, since Obama is a socialist. It’s not as if he threw money at the banks instead of at their customers, or allowed health care reform to be hijacked for the benefit of insurance companies…