---

UAW: GM Executive Compensation 'Way Out Of Proportion'

23 April 1998

UAW Vice President Richard Shoemaker Terms GM Executive Compensation 'Way Out Of Proportion'

    DETROIT, April 23 -- Criticizing the large increase in both
salary and bonuses awarded to GM Chairman Jack Smith for 1997, UAW
Vice President Richard Shoemaker declared, "I certainly didn't see any gains
in market share or sales that would justify a whopping 53 percent bonus, or an
11 percent salary increase.  Just the salary increase alone is way out of
proportion to the wages earned by UAW workers at GM who are working just as
hard as Jack Smith to improve GM's operations."  Shoemaker directs the union's
General Motors Department.
    "It seems that executives are being rewarded not for solid gains in market
share, but rather for how quickly workers are being jettisoned, how quickly
the corporation can sell off profitable components operations and how quickly
the corporation can open factories in Mexico and elsewhere abroad to take
advantage of low wages," Shoemaker continued.
    "These grossly inflated executive salaries reflect a corporate culture
that totally ignores the needs of workers and their communities," Shoemaker
charged, continuing, "Instead, the corporation is focused exclusively on
pleasing Wall Street analysts, and increasing profits and dividends at the
expense of the workers and communities that made the corporation successful in
the first place, and to whom the corporation goes first to sell their
products."
    "Workers must know that when the corporation and its top-level management
do well they will also do well.  They believe in the concept that this nation
was founded on -- a rising tide raises all ships, the rowboats and the skiffs
of workers, as well as the yachts of executives and top level managers,"
Shoemaker stated.  "That concept has ceased to guide GM in recent years,"
Shoemaker said.
    "The glaring inequity of GM executive compensation comes into especially
sharp focus when you consider the enormous chasm between the multi-million
dollar salaries of the top executives and the pittance that is paid to their
Mexican workforce, who were forced to strike last year just to force the
corporation to pay them a yearly bonus of about $30," Shoemaker concluded.

SOURCE  UAW