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Earlier this month the Sun-Times Media Group asked its bankruptcy judge for permission to pay 20 employees as much as $1.8 million in bonuses if and when the company’s sold. Last month the Tribune Company’s bankruptcy judge gave it permission to pay some 700 employes more than $13 million in bonuses. Both companies have been laying off employees right and left, but it’s because times are so tough that the bonuses are necessary, they say. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Tribune Company’s chief financial office “testified that the bonuses are critical to keeping key managers motivated.”
Halbreich said the bonuses were contingent on the sale of the company’s assets and would come out of the proceeds of that sale. “This sort of incentive plan is designed to serve everyone’s best interests by creating incentives to achieve the highest asset sale proceeds as quickly as possible,” Halbreich argued. Moreover, he pledged that he himself would take no bonus.
A salary seems to have become a sort of license that reserves the right of access to an executive’s talents. But to take advantage of those talents when they’re most needed, additional payment is required.
