Greed Greed Greed

This is the kind of stuff that STEAMS me the most, especially in this current financial "crisis" (crisis? Yeah right).

Willie Walsh (never heard of him, but what an unfortunate name) has asked BA staff to work for nothing. As a token, he too has offered to work for a month for free. That's big of him, isn't it?

Of course, what is somewhat underplayed is that he earns more per month than most of his employees make in a year! (At least the employees he's asking to take a pay cut!)

Grrrr. I HATE this kind of hypocrisy!

If he really wants to save the company from bankruptcy, why doesn't he agree to work eleven months for free! Work for a normal wage. Sixty grand a year, which I'm assuming is a half decent whack in the UK? And which he fully expects his staff to live on. And demand all the other execs at BA who are making a half million or more a year to accept a less OBSCENE salary!

Call me bitter, but it smacks of SUCH hypocrisy that someone earning £735000 a year is asking low level staff to take a pay cut. And of course, it's not limited to British Airways. Show me any big corporation going bust in the financial "crisis" and I'll show you executives who are still earning massive salaries. While they run the company into the ground, they still collect fat pay cheques, obscene bonuses, and share offers that with their inside knowledge they can sell before the company goes belly up.

One company in Christchurch went bust. LWR. Been around for a hundred years. A century! And I gotta ask. What were the company's leadership DOING for those HUNDRED years? Obviously not preparing the company for down turns. A hundred years of profit and suddenly they're out of business? What's that about? Did they not think maybe they better put a bit of cash away for tough times? I wonder what bonuses were paid out to the executives over those hundred years?

Most executives don't give a shit about their staff. They don't give a shit about their companies, other than to secure their own salaries and bonuses. They don't care about community. They don't care about society or the economy, other than to maintain their place within the elite. They will stomp on any employee beneath them to save their own asses. It's not personal, it's business. The second it became "business" Western civilisation was screwed. Nobody cares about anybody any more. There's no more personal, it's all business.

I'm really sick of politicians and the rest of the elite screwing the rest of us. It's been that way for centuries, if not since civilisation began. The same people who make and enforce the laws are the ones who benefit most from keeping the masses under the burden of those laws.

Willie Walsh is representative of the GREED is good mentality. I don't necessarily begrudge him a huge salary, but I do, in these times, resent his plea that the little people take a pay cut while he still banks fourteen thousand pounds a week! And I resent that while he banks that fourteen grand a week, the company he heads goes down the drain. If he loses his job, it will no doubt be cushioned by a huge settlement package, while the staff that he dumps will have to go straight onto welfare and the mortgagee sale pile.

Grrrr.