Circuit City Rewards Execs As Stock Tanks

jamie tipped us to Dean Baker's Beat the Press blog, where Baker comments on a followup to Circuit City's firing of all its highest-paid salespeople last March (Slashdot discussion here). Circuit City's stock has cratered in the meanwhile, and their response has been to offer $1 million retention bonuses to executive VPs. Baker points out that each one of these bonuses represents 35 years' salary for one of the fired salespeople.

35 years salary?

[nacturation]

... firing of all its highest-paid salespeople ... offer $1 million retention bonuses to executive VPs. Baker points out that each one of these bonuses represents 35 years' salary for one of the fired salespeople.

So their highest paid salespeople made just under $30K a year? If highest-paid == best producing, they can easily command a lot more than that elsewhere.
 

Re:35 years salary?

[iamhassi]

"So their highest paid salespeople made just under $30K a year?"

$30k/yr is about $15/hr, which sounds like high pay for someone that works at circuit city and isn't upper management.

Re:Last Time

[iamhassi]

"That's the last time I buy something from Circuit City. "

well don't go to Best Buy either. They're not well liked around here:
Best Buy Hands Out Cease & Desist Letters for Christmas [slashdot.org]
Best Buy 'Geek Squad' Accused of Pirating Software [slashdot.org]
Best Buy hopes to exorcize devil patrons [arstechnica.com]

Re:Let's see here ...

[rasputin465]

If you want to argue execs deserve huge pay because so much money is at stake, then they should also stand to leave the company hundreds of millions poorer than they came into it, if they underperform.

This is the whole purpose behind corporations; they were originally given the rights and privileges of a human being in order to alleviate much of the risk to the execs. If the company goes bankrupt, the people associated with the corporation (particularly, the execs) get off scott-free. The movie The Corporation [thecorporation.com] gives a pretty good (albeit somewhat biased) overview of the history, legal structure of corps.

Re:35 years salary?

[electronmaster]

As a current employee of 3 years (at circuit city), i figured id share my $0.02:

I think the firings were worth it to the company. Granted, the people that were there were friends, most of them were overpaid. We had about 6 cashiers making over $18 an hour. To ring people up. No sales. In fact, there were only about 3 sales people that lost their jobs in our store, all of which were "department seniors" that sold almost nothing, and told others how to do their jobs, more like mini managers making about $16.

A new associate makes $8.50 if seasonal, and an experienced part timer like me, makes about $10 to $11.

O, and now more than half of the people that were fired are now working at my store again for a pay cut.