Oink, oink, oink. Grocery chain CEO  compensations

These are the CEOs who are whining that $17 an hour is just too much to pay their workers.

Albertson’s
Lawrence Johnston, CEO of Albertson’s, makes 12.22 million a year.  That works out to $6100 an hour  (12.2 million / 2000 hours)  

Safeway
Steven Burd, CEO
Took a “pay cut” then exercised millions in stock options

Insider transactions for 2003 show multiple option exercises of 50,000 shares of Safeway at $6 a share then immediately selling at market price of about $23-24, netting about $900,000 each time.

From UFCW Local 1036

Safeway’s CEO cuts his salary, but takes sneaky mllions

Burd made $2,209,000 in salary last year. He has announced that he would take 41 percent pay cut, but did not think we’d notice that he’d sneak in about $11 million in new stock options.

Kroger
Joseph Pichler CEO, 3.93 million salary. Owns 1.2 million shares. Disposed of about 270,000 shares this year in “non open market” transactions, and exercised options of 80,000 shares at 4.60 (the stock is 19 today). Deep Audit, our resident forensic accountant tells us these shares might have been a gift to someone.

The strike is spreading nationwide.

More than 70,000 grocery workers in Southern California went on strike or were locked out of 859 stores on Sunday. That action came five days after 10,000 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 655 in St. Louis set up pickets at 97 stores operated by three local supermarket chains.

On Monday, another 3,300 workers in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky voted to strike 44 Kroger stores in that region. The strike was to take effect at midnight.

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In Los Angeles, the workers are restless

L.A. grocery strike joined by transportation strike

The 70,000 grocery workers now on strike in southern California were joined at midnight Monday by Metropolitan Transit Authority workers. The mechanics union is striking and workers will honor the picket lines thus shutting down the entire system.

And now, please grab a hanky and weep for Lawrence Johnston, the CEO of Albertson’s, who somehow stuggles on with his 12.22 million a year salary. He and the other CEO’s want to break the grocery union, whining Wal-Mart is hurting them so much they must cut benefits and slash wages to stay “competitive”.

Don’t believe it. Albertson’s made a gross profit of 10.38 billion this last year, and a net profit of 724 million. Their profits are up, not down. This is a union busting attempt, pure and simple, and judging from the number of cars honking in support of strikers yesterday in L.A., I’d say management is in for a protracted war.

They want to slash wages of new hires and freeze existing wages, insinuating that $17 an hour is just too much to pay for experienced employees.

Well,  Lawrence “Greedy Pig” Johnston makes $6100 an hour (12.2 million / 2000 hrs a year ) and you can bet he’s not taking a pay freeze.

A real nightmare may await them. I’m hearing the Teamsters may strike in solidarity with the grocery workers. The warehouses are computerized, scabs and management don’t have the knowledge to operate them. Thus, a Teamsters strike would shut down the grocery chains completely.

Why would Teamsters do this? Because, as the ILWU says “an injury to one is an injury to all”. If the greedy pigs break the powerful grocery union, no union is safe. If the grocery union wins, then all unions win with them.

And now two major unions are on strike in L.A. (as well as sheriff deputies, who are staging wildcat strikes)

PS IF you’re in L.A., join us tonight in support of grocery workers:

Tuesday night at 8:15 PM at Ralphs in Koreatown, Western Avenue at 8th Street. Join neighbors, friends, and ANSWER activists by bringing signs, hot coffee, food, encouragement, and solidarity to the striking workers!

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That’s what we’re afraid of

President Bush on Monday rejected complaints from some members of Congress that he needs to assert more control over Iraq policy, saying, “The person who is in charge is me.”

Someone less linguistically challenged, of course, would have said “I am in charge”. Dubya made this stumbling assertion after ranking members of his own party opined he wasn’t in control of his staff or the war.

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Kinky Friedman for governor: “How hard can it be?”

Kinky Friedman — novelist, humorist, essayist — thinks he might want to be the next governor of Texas.

But if Lance Armstrong and Willie Nelson stay out of the race, you’re probably talking to the next governor of Texas,” he said last week by phone from his ranch near Medina in southwest Texas.

He quickly added, “Don’t forget, man’s ability to delude himself is infinite.”

Friedman said the best governor Texas ever had was the first one. “It was Sam Houston, and when he was elected they found him drunk under a bridge sleeping with Indians.”

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