Lenovo CEO Gives His $3M Bonus To 10k Workers 267
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."
I would high-five this guy. (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't see that often. Very refreshing and restores a little faith in humanity.
An even more generous example (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.thelocal.se/41536/20120619/ [thelocal.se]
Family-run firm Nominit in Värnamo, southern Sweden, will be paying out 114 million kronor ($16.3 million) to their current and former employees in a gesture of goodwill. The company was founded in 1937 and is the two founders and owners have no heirs to their fortune. The company, which currently has about 50 employees, manufactures rivets and has a turnover of about 100 million kronor, of which 60 comes from export.
$16,000,000 to 50 workers.
Something similar where I grew up... (Score:5, Interesting)
Kingston technology (memory manufacturer) split $100 million between 500+ employees. They also gave scholarships to all the local schools (mine included) - http://articles.latimes.com/1996-12-15/news/mn-9424_1_million-bonus-employee [latimes.com]
That's great and all, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
$300 per employee, which is about a month's worth of salary.
If you're only paying your employees a measly $300 a month, how about a raise instead?
Re:I would high-five this guy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bloody communists! (Score:5, Interesting)
You joke but I actually saw arguments along these lines not long after the 2008 economic crash. People worried that if the CEOs of the banks that took government loans didn't get obscene bonuses as usual, it would pressure other banks which weren't bailed out to do the same and that would be un-capitalist government interference.
There's no hope for you guys, sorry.
Re:Well, good for him (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep in mind, his total earnings for the year were $14 million. At a company where, according to the summary, $300 is an average month's salary. Not to take away from what he did, giving up $3,000,000 is still an amazing thing to do, but it's gotta be easier when you bring in $14 million a year than it is otherwise.
Re:Bloody communists! (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>Cold day in hell before any american CEO would do this
There was an American company I saw profiled by ABC's John Stossel back in 2009. Unfortunately I forget the name, but the CEO decided not to have layoffs. Instead he agreed to take a cut in pay to the same level as the workers' pay, in order to keep everyone employed. I guess hell froze over that day.
In theory... it *is* a bit like *communism* (Score:5, Interesting)
Many Americans don't seem to know (or perhaps care about) distinctions between communism (the form of utopia which countries like the Soviet Union supposedly wanted to achieve) and socialism (the system they intended to use in the transitional phase). Oversimplifying a bit... Communism is supposed to be a state where there is such an abundance of resources that everyone can get whatever they need and the motive to work would come not from material goods but from the social status that good workers receive, the idealistic desire to work for the good of mankind and stuff like that. Socialism is the idea that when a government takes control of the means of production and puts them to good use, the results are in some way (be it productivity, philosphical differences or whatever) better than than what capitalistic society can achieve... and if the difference in productivity is great enough, it could some day result in the overabundance of resources needed for communism.
So... When a CEO decides that he wants to give away huge sums of money (for social status and/or idealistic reasons... in a situation where he must have overabundance of resources for himself, because he is able to give away millions) and that the best receiver for the money are the workers that have produced the said wealth, I think that one could argue that it's - in small scale - very similar to how communist utopia was supposed to work.
Naturally this is all just a mixture of being pedantic and some form of thought experiments... but then again, what could you expect in a thread like this.
Damned if you do.. (Score:5, Interesting)
And damned if you don't!
No, actually it means (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Holy Crap! (Score:5, Interesting)
At my work, in 2008 we were still profitable, but the downturn was coming and we all knew it. The senior execs all forewent their own bonuses, but they distributed bonuses to all the lower level folks. I tell you that single act bought them a ton of loyalty from myself. We finally got back to profitability last year and the bonuses came back for everyone this year.
Re:Bloody communists! (Score:5, Interesting)
Jokes aside, when Henry Ford gave his workers raises, he was labelled a socialist. Even though his workers were much more efficient, and made Ford rich, when Hank gave even a part of that money back to the workers, he was labelled socialist.
The trick is, Ford new that he needed a work force that was paid well to buy his cars. The payroll that you call an expense is actually the wages that can purchase someone else's product. And then the payroll that goes to those workers can buy someone else's product. All a virtuous cycle. Pardon the car reference, but some times money is like oil in a motor - it only does it's work when it circulates and when it stands still the motor seizes.
Sadly most CEOs now don't have that foresight. We've been taught so much "make it someone else's problem" and "the only people you think of are the stockholders" that we've lost any vision. We're taught that unions are evil. Though they've seriously lost their way, they had use where they forced wages for everyone above some point so that the cycles can continue, and payrolls are squeezed to where we can't afford anything.