An Immodest Proposal

By: Mark Shields
Syndicated Columnist

The captains of American corporate life could learn much about how real leaders treat their troops from the captains and the lieutenants of the Unites States Marine Corps.

The Marine officer looks out first for his men, making sure that they have food to eat and a place to sleep. When deployed, the Marine officer waits at the end of the mess line until all the PFCs and corporals under his command have been fed. Contrast these unselfish military values with self-concerned CEOs who make sure their companies set aside millions of dollars for their own personal pensions, while they and their companies fail to fund the pension guarantees they have made to their employees.

Consider the example of United Airlines, which was relieved by a federal bankruptcy judge of $3.2 billion in pension obligations to four employee unions. Many of United's 121,000 current and former employees will have their promised pensions cut in half. Imagine the anguish and the anxiety they must endure. Imagine their fury when they remember that just before the airline went into bankruptcy, United gave CEO Glenn Tilton an iron-clad $4.5 million pension.

The airline skies are very friendly indeed to the top brass. Delta Airlines, which is expected to follow United into pension default, while laying off thousands of employees, scrimped to set aside $4.5 million in a pension trust for CEO Leo Mullin. Six months before US Airways filed for bankruptcy, the airline thoughtfully provided a most golden parachute of $15 million for CEO Stephen Wolf.

Please do not think this is a private matter between the corporations and their workers. More than a few capitalists' idea of the perfect arrangement is that they are free to privatize all profits and to socialize all liabilities. When a company fails to meet its pension obligations to its retirees, those broken promises are kept -- usually at a much-reduced benefit level -- by the taxpayers of the nation through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), which has lost an average of $10 billion a year over the last three years and for the 2003-2004 year, alone, was $23.3 billion in the red. The director of the Congressional Budget Office now predicts a $71 billion deficit for the PBGC in the next decade.

Here is one immodest proposal: Before the working families of America have to take over the responsibility for fulfilling a company's broken promises to the workers whose productivity and loyalty made that company profitable, it will be illegal, under criminal penalty, for such a company to award or for any executive of that company to receive any bonus or pension. Is it too much to ask that the barons of the boardroom share just a little bit in the sacrifice and pain that the flight attendants, the machinists, pilots and the baggage handlers are forced to bear?

The Bush administration has fought tooth and toenail to enact new laws to punish individuals who go through bankruptcy, but it has expressed not even the mildest dissatisfaction with CEOs whose cashmere pockets are lined as the companies they run jettison their obligations to their own workers and instead require ordinary citizens -- most of whom do not have employer-provided pensions -- to pay the companies' bills.

Nor is this just an airline industry problem. You can bet that the auto companies with major pension commitments are closely watching and waiting. The Wall Street Journal reported how Motorola chose not to make any contributions for a full year to the pension plan for 70,000 employees, but instead did contribute $38 million in pension benefits to its top executives.

Others may like the Darwinian-survival of the most powerful practiced by United, Delta and Motorola. As for me, I prefer the Marine Corps code, where the officer's first concern is not for his personal comfort but for the safety and well-being of his troops.

COPYRIGHT 2005 MARK SHIELDS