Pigging out in Detroit
11/14/08
[donation]
By Joel Thurtell
What was put in place at that time was very appropriate.
— Nancy Rae, executive vice president for human resources and communications, Chrysler LLC
Very appropriate indeed.
If your name is Nancy Rae.
What an amazing performance Rae gave for a Detroit Free Press reporter inquiring about so-called “executive retention bonuses” at Chrysler, LLC, one of the Big Three auto-making companies now pleading poor to Congress and begging for a taxpayer-paid bailout of their debt-ridden and virtually sales-proof operations.
Rae, the official defender of Chrysler largess to top execs, herself picked up a tidy 1.66 million smackers, thanks to the bonus plan she described to the Free Press as “very conservatively constructed.”
Man oh man.
I’d sure like one of those “conservatively constructed” bonuses.
What have I done to pull the automakers out of their present crisis? In other words, what have I done to DESERVE such a generous, such a magnanimous, no, such a cock-eyed, ridiculous and self-serving piece of corporate chicanery?
About as much as any of the half dozen bigwigs who gleaned a total of more than $10 million.
The argument for giving these handouts to the top half dozen was supposedly made by DaimlerChrysler in 2007 when it was readying its American car-maker for sale. The German company wanted to make sure there was a plan for keeping key managers in place during a change of ownership. But now that the hotshots are collecting their ill-gotten gains, the system is looking a bit stupid and poorly-timed.
The truth always hurts, no matter the timing.
If there is a government bailout of the Big Three, I’d like to see performance evaluations on these honchos. What did they do to earn that $10 million?
Now, these were only the six largest bonuses. The Free Press mentions that there were others that ranged down to a paltry 200,000 grand.
Imagine getting stuck with “only” 200 k.
We don’t know the total amount of all these bonuses.
It’s not just a matter of stopping these outrageous payouts.
Here’s my slogan: Stop the checks, sack execs!
Under a federal bailout, all of these yokels need to be swept out.
But the better alternative would be to let things shake out in another kind of bailout — federal bankruptcy court.
I can’t imagine how any contribution these people made could justify sapping money from the $30 billion Chrysler now claims it needs to stay afloat.
The assumption underlying the entire discussion about the bailout is based on concerns 1) that a failure of one or more of the Big Three would devastate huge swaths of American society, taking down auto part suppliers, banks that have made loans to them, bars and restaurants that rely on workers spending money and foremost workers themselves, who would be left without jobs and a source of income and 2) the belief among many Americans that this country needs to have a homegrown car industry as an element of national security.
I have no doubt that Number One is true, and that a single failure would be devastating.
I’m not so sure about Number Two. Is it national security, or national pride?
If it’s pride, how much are we willing to pay for it?
But let’s accept as a given that our nation needs an auto industry as part, at least, of our national identity. The question then is WHICH auto industry do we need? The one we have, which is moribund and fully capable at any time of driving itself into the ground and then screaming for help because the nation so desperately needs it to uphold some chauvinistic sense of who we are?
Or should we invest our money in a NEW car industry, one dedicated to designing and making efficient, inexpensive cars people actually want to purchase with money they earned, as opposed to cars that are sold to, say, rental agencies and then re-sold back to the manufacturers to keep alive fictitious counts of sales? Or cars that are leased at absurdly low prices to employees to stoke the myth of ever-popular Ford, GMs and Chrysler products.
What if we put our national treasure into a brand new automotive industry predicated on serving national needs?
Hey, maybe part of that new automotive industry would be reviving the same public transportation systems the car-makers tore about decades ago so as to create a false need and hence demand for the autos hey were selling us to us to uphold their outrageous salaries and bonuses.
Time to step back and look broadly at our transportation needs.
What is the role of the automobile in the bigger context of transportation locally, regionally, nationally and internationally?
Why do we Americans believe we need cars in the first place? Isn’t it because of the billions the Big Three have spent over generations creating the psychological need for these gleaming machines at the same time that they re-jiggered the country’s transportation structure to make it absolutely essential that we own a car or truck in order to keep a job?
Why should we want to retain that vision?
The whole damned aim of Detroit was self-serving.
Let’s scrap it.
Time for the nation to serve itself.
Let’s pump our money into a rejuvenated mass transportation system. If the Ford, General Motors and Chrysler can help, sans those high-paid drones and fully re-structured into efficient, nation-serving organizations, great.
If not, let’s kiss the Big Three goodbye.
In the long run, we’d gain more that we lose from the demise of Detroit.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
