Gannett CEO gives up ‘chump change’ – empathy my ass

I first read this story earlier today and was slightly irritated by it and then I read JR Raphael’s post here on the Inquisitr about Gannett’s CEO; Craig Dubow, making a big deal about taking a pay cut in sympathy of employees facing pending layoffs. Well, isn’t that nice of him – a CEO with heart. Ya .. okay … can I puke now?

Let’s get this straight. Here we have a guy pulling down $7.5 million per year (this is his base $1.2 million base salary plus all his bonuses, stock options and other goodies) who suddenly has discovered his empathy for the working class facing financial ruin. So he says that for one year only he is going to cut his own salary to $7.3 million. That’s right folks Dubow is going to sacrifice $200,000 of his paycheck in a guesture of understanding.

WTF! Does this guy really even comprehend the economic world that the majority of workers; like the one’s facing layoffs from Gannett, live in? As far as I am concerned that this guesture is nothing short of insulting to those workers. How many people would even half of that yearly salary being paid to one person employ? However this kind of CEO greed isn’t just limited to Gannett but is persauvsive throughout the corporate world. Single individuals are earning more money that the combined GDP of the poorest countries in the world and for what?

The simple fact that they have had the luck and the connections that enabled them to be named a CEO of some corporation shouldn’t mean that any one of them is worth making multi million dollar salaries. Making the kind of salaries that are being made on the back of forever rising cost of goods and an increasing base of the working poor. At what point does being paid a fair salary for work being done turn become nothing short of personal greed at the cost of people sliding down the economic scale into oblivion.

The fact that Dubow is in charge of a business that is crying to anyone that will listen about how they are being led to the slaughter by the Internet is nothing but incredibly laughable. Newspapers are going out of business, cutting jobs left right and center and yet people like Dubow are making multi million dollar salaries – for what? Then to insult us all by declaring he has empathy for the working poor that his company employs; or lays off take your pick these days, and is going to sacrafice not even 3% off his salary for one year.

No wonder our economy is in the toilet with this kind of attitude – screw the working poor and keep paying out multi million dollar salaries to a minority of well connected smucks who couldn’t care about those people struggling to just get by.

Keep your $200G’s Mr. Dubow – we don’t need to be insulted like this.