In this era of companies who screw over customers, employees, shareholders, anybody they can, it is refreshing to see leadership of a major company step up and take one for the team.
Too many times the CEO will sit back, slash thousands if not tens of thousands of jobs, while continuing to be rewarded by the Board of Directors with an already excessive salary package. Not this time...
Continental Airlines Inc. said Thursday it is cutting 3,000 jobs and reducing capacity in the fourth quarter by 11 percent, citing record fuel costs that have pushed the airline industry into a "crisis."
The company also said Chairman and Chief Executive Lawrence Kellner and President Jeff Smisek will not take salaries or incentive pay for the rest of the year.
The job cuts represent about 6.5 percent of the company's work force of 45,000.
Houston-based Continental said it will begin pulling back on flights in September, when departures on its mainline operations will be about 16 percent below the numbers of September 2007. For the year, capacity will fall 11 percent.
CEO Kellner will give up part of a hefty compensation package. In 2007, his salary was $712,500, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Kellner got a $3.3 million incentive payment, stock and options grants that the company valued at nearly $1.94 million when they were issued in February 2007, and $45,196 in other compensation.
It's things like this that make me like Continental Airlines, and if they actually served more cities out of Seattle, I would definitely fly them. They just don't fly where I want/need to go.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment