Suffering For Thee But Not For Me
By Boeing CEO Jim McNerney is a sociopath:
What we’re hearing from the Boeing Machinists right now isn’t just the usual labor-management posturing. It’s a primal scream of the middle class.
When a union boss the other day called Boeing’s offer to do the 777X jetliner work here a “piece of crap,” he was of course referring to the gory details of that contract: the canceled pension plan, the slashed benefits, the appalling 1 percent pay raise issued only every other year.
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It’s a race to the bottom. Or rather, a slog to an era when workers will be more reliant on Social Security than ever.
So what’s most galling is that Boeing’s CEO is out pushing to cut back on the nation’s retirement plan as well.
In recent years Boeing CEO Jim McNerney has headed the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group of top U.S. corporations. Earlier this year that group called for raising the eligibility age for Social Security to 70 years old, as well as crimping back on the benefits (by reducing the index of inflation used to calculate payouts.)
“We are going to need our employees to work longer just to fill the needs that we have in the work force,” said a Roundtable suit, helpfully explaining why all Americans should willingly retire later, for less.
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Speaking of expanding, that’s what keeps happening to the pension of Boeing’s CEO. According to the company’s recent annual reports, McNerney’s pension holdings soared by $6.3 million just in the past year.
If McNerney retires now he will get $265,575 a month. That’s not a misprint: The man presiding over a drive to slash retirement for his own workers, and for stiffs in the rest of America, stands to glide out on a company pension that pays a quarter-million dollars per month.
But no doubt he’s earned his salary because of his sobriety and hard work, unlike his employees who are lower on the food chain because they are lesser people. Or at least this would have been the logic of the first Gilded Age. At least Henry Clay Frick was honest in his ideology. But McNerney is moving in the direction of such honesty. Why bother hiding the fact that you are loaded and want to become even more rich by eviscerating not only the safety net of your employees but of the entire working and middle classes of the United States? You have the power, it’s not 1950 anymore when Republicans had to pretend like they respected the existence of labor unions.