Layoffs abound. They are hitting the main stream media as well.
CBS has an interesting twist in its layoff plans.
There is big trouble, so far unreported, brewing among the unions of CBS…
CBS is involved in a wave of firings. Blaming the economy, many people have been let go… For the first nine months of the year revenues for CBS Radio declined 10% to $1.2 billion. Operating income for the division plunged 19% to $420 million.
So to compensate for those losses many people got pink slips… That’s what happens in an sour economy.
However, (and somehow you knew this post was going to have a “however”)……
CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves’ compensation soared last year – to $36.8 million, a 28% increase over the previous year — even as ratings on its flagship television network slipped and advertising sales at its radio and television stations softened.
Word inside the unions of CBS is that it is time for a strike. Bonuses are not in a company’s interest. Most particularly, guaranteed bonuses, which must be paid by eradicating essential jobs, are not creating future value in the stockholder’s interest.
There is nothing official yet, but… high profile strikes, which have been absent for so long, are about to make a comeback and most insiders are betting that the CBS unions will begin the process.
Further talks exists of a request for another $20 million bonus by this same chief executive, who will be asking for it by the end of this month….
Meanwhile more CBS job cuts are coming….
5 comments
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March 14, 2009 at 7:29 am
Nancy Willing
More people are trying to express WTF is up with a system that rewards the shareholders (and by doing so, the directors reward the top managment). The principles have been skewed against the company in favor of the company’s market values and against its workers/workers’ families in favor of the bottom line (DIVIDEND).
This skewed path has shown by example after example this allegience to the stocks is a path to eventual insolvency. These devoted market principles screw the very community that nurtured these companies and now these communities, this country are FUCKED. Fucked over by Reagan et al.
March 14, 2009 at 12:16 pm
kavips
Interestingly enough, you are close to point.
This country was as you say fucked, not so much by our greed, we are human beings after all, but by our tax laws.
If one reads here,
http://kavips.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/chapter-11-business-loans-back-on-line/
and here,
http://kavips.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/chapter-12-the-stimulus-package/
one finds that historically what we consider prosperous years, occurred during the highest tax rates, and each and every time we dropped tax rates below a certain level, we paid a severe price in either a recession or a Great Depression.
Taxes are the natural damper that recycles money from top to bottom. Without that mechanism, we rapidly evolve into a third world nation, where all the capital is in very few hands. Of course, we then develop the same problems on the lower echelons just like they have….
As one can see from those two sources, it is like tuning a carburetor; the art is determining how much, or how little one recycles from the top… cut out all the fuel, the economy dies… cut out all the air, it sputters and quits…. Mix them together perfectly, the economic engine runs fine…
Taxes are great… 3/5 of our nation receives more than they pay…. That is good. If you are lucky enough to be in the top fifth, you should be grateful for your opportunity America has given you, and should, like the poor teenager who goes off to Iraq, shoulder your responsibility like a man without whining.
lol.
March 14, 2009 at 4:01 pm
David Anderson
Nothing like a good strike to strengthen the company and keep jobs. There are plenty of people who will line up to take those jobs if they don’t want them. I hope they consider that. Not a lot of people are old school like I am. I don’t believe in scab work, but watch and see how many do in these times.
March 14, 2009 at 5:28 pm
kavips
Why David, if I didn’t know better I would think you were defending the practice of skimming money out of the company for ill deserved bonuses for the top directors, at the expense of everyone else?
The strike is to force the issue. Do you want to lose money? or make money?
The strike will crush CBS because the entire world will flick the channel and forget they every existed.
March 15, 2009 at 8:44 am
Nancy Willing
The law only follows those who MAKE it. They don’t enact themselves. The greedy lobby et al writes the fucking tax law for those they are peddling influence from. puhlease.