http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/business/16378045.htm
Robert Nardelli walked away from The Home Depot Inc. on Wednesday with a parting pay package worth $210 million. Shareholders can only wonder how much more he might have pocketed had Home Depot’s stock price increased while he was chief executive.
You know, when I first heard this, I thought, this is what is wrong with this country (among other things). There is no accountability for those in power–only greed and self-motivation.
I heart this country!
These packages are (I believe always, but maybe it is only typically) signed off on by the board that is elected by the shareholders. Shareholders are not w/o recourse…don’t re-elect the board if you don’t like the decisions they are making.
Eric-
Its not really that simple. Board nominees are typically chosen by management. Rarely, if ever, do shareholders have enough clout to choose and elect their own choices for boards. Consequently boards are typically stocked with buddies of management. This has been the case pre-corporate scandal, and I suspect it won’t change all that much going forward. The reality is that the individual shareholder doesn’t have much say–its the institutional investors that have the ability to make these changes, and frankly, they don’t have a lot of motivation to do that unless the company has a track record of board malfeasance.
In other words, its a self-perpetuating good-old boys club.
The truth from store level. My husband was fired on December 12th from Home Depot for policies that have been abused hundreds of times in the past 10 years. The companies right to fire at will has been used unfairly and there are facts to back this up. My husband had 21 years with HD and he was maliciously fired, destroyed his character, accused of wrongdoing that others have not been reprimanded for and they even denied him un employment. I too worked for HD for 10 years this time around, as James and I met in 1986 at a store in Jacksonville Florida. I quit and came back 10 years later. James made a bad decision, not a terminating offense by everyone’s standards but the human resource managers who fire people when it suits them. The CEO had the same human resource manager that was involved in the termination try to contact me, give me a break. You cannot destroy the lives of people for doing something that store, assistant and even corporate levels have been caught in wrongdoing and they still have their jobs. He was treated like a common criminal, threatened with prosecution and humiliated by an associate at the store level along with a couple of loss preventon guy’s and the ops manager. He didn’t steal anything, he didn’t even borrow anything, he simply made a wrong decision. I quit on January 4th as it was making me sick to keep going in every day to a company who didn’t care who or what we did for them. James consistently made a million dollars a year for them, was personally tranferred to the carolinas by Arthur Blank, worked with the best of them in the past 21 years that are no longer there but he certainly helped them retire. My fight against HD has been going on since the 12th of December, just coincidence that Bob Nardelli got fired too. I have made no secret about my fight all the way to corporate. The associates and customers are behind us all the way. The severance pay they gave to Bob Nardelli belongs to the associates for the blood and tears and stress Bob brought on us. He took every incentitive away from the associates and put salary caps on all positions and cut hours so drastically in the stores that there was no way we could give 100% customer service, listen to the customers. I am a 46 year old woman and I was doing the same job my 23 year old son was doing having to pull lumber all day long. Had to threaten to quit and than got transferred to get out of that position because they didn’t have anyone else who could do the job? So yes there are store managers, assistant managers a vice president who was suspended for 6 months all makeing terminal offenses who still have their jobs. We have lost everything and have nothing. Do I care if I hurt their business by telling the truth, NO. After they fired James, the HR took me off the schedule and didn’t inform me. I had to make calls to find out what they were going to do with me as I had been removed but not transferred. About an hour and a half later I was again transferred. Is there any dignity in the way we have been treated? Are their associates that can tell the same story? Are there people who should have been fired and still have their jobs? The answer to all is YES. They made him continue to work while they made their decision. He followed though on their christmas party. We both deserve better than what we got. The associate want to be heard. ASk anyone thats knows James and me and they will tell you this scares the hell out of them because if they did this to James, what are they going to do to them.