Do these people not know what PR is?
Posted by: andy in Politics, finance, tags: auto industry, bailout, controversial t shirts, finance
I just heard about a story that left me absolutely amazed at the lack of self-awareness that exsits within corporate America, and presumably around much of the rest of the world, as well.
The ‘Big Three’ car makers in America, Ford, Chrsyler, and General Motors, made their way to Washington D.C. with caps in hand today to request that the American taxpayer bailed them out to stop the auto industry in the U.S. from collapsing. I can’t find a figure anywhere saying how much they were asking for, but I’m willing to bet that it has a whole load of zeroes involved. I’m not specifically for or against this bailout, I’m not too aware of the issues involved or whether the companies involved are victims of the current economic climate or victims of their own stupidity. The bailout isn’t really what concerns me in this article, it’s how the CEOs of those three companies made their way to Washington.
Yes, the people who are desperate to have their industry saved by money for the American taxpayer each took a private jet took their meeting, a move that Gary Ackerman, a Democratic Representative from New York described as being like “seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. It kind of makes you a little bit suspicious.” Do you think that when they were sitting in their leather chairs, 30,000 feet up in the sky, they wondered how their travel arrangements were going to look to the public? If they did, I wonder if it happened before or after the champagne was served.
CNN are estimating that the flights would have cost about $20,000 for each CEO, which in terms of the scale of money that they’re talking about isn’t really that much, and reps for the companies have said that the private jets are a matter of safety for their CEOs, but come one, if there’s ever a time when a bit of humility is important, its when you’re asking for a loan! Especially when the money for that loan comes from the people who have already bought your cars.
I’ve complained about the media focusing on the wrong things in the past, and I realise that this story isn’t one of the major issues facing the world today, no one is really surprised that fat cat executives live in the lap of luxury, but I think that a story like this highlights how out of touch these people are with the general public, and when you consider that they’re the CEOs of American car companies you’d have thought that their public personas would have been finely manicured to ensure that they appeared like ‘normal’ American people, even if they secretly dreamed of driving a BMW or Mercedes. Of course, the media is all over this, everyone’s talking about it, even Perez Hilton has managed to stop gossiping about celebs to gossip about CEOs, its the perfect story becuase it doesn’t appear that anyone really gets hurt, and everyone can have a good laugh about it.
But, actually, people do get hurt. Apparently, in 2006, the median salary for someone in the US was around $26,000, the estimated cost of the flight for one of the CEOs was $20,000, and that ignores the millions of dollars that it cost for the companies to buy the private jets. The cost for the CEO to fly in coach class was $288, or $857 if they went first class. Every time that CEO takes a flight instead of rubbing shoulders , it costs the same amount as paying an American to work for the majority of a year, so when they say that they’re trying to streamline their business, and that involves laying people off from their jobs, perhaps they should consider that by cutting back on their perks and rubbing shoulders with the proleteriat in first class that they might be able to stop someone from becoming just another statistic amongst the unemployed in America.
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