More Economic Woes

I could hardly believe what I saw when I went onto CNET's news site and read this article . Basically the new CIO of Hewlett-Packard gets a $15.3 million pay package for leaving Dell and signing with HP. If you scroll down the page a bit, you come across this article . It states that HP is about to lay off approximately 15,000 workers in addition to the already 4,500 workers who have been fired this year. The goal of these layoff is to reduce expenditures by $1 billion a year for the next two years.

If HP is struggling to keep costs down, why do they pay so much for executives? Clearly this is a case of favoritism for those in power. They lavishly spend upon themselves, while taking from those who make the company what it is, the workers. In further evidence of the above favoritism, the article states that, "HP's management team and business units will remain in their current form, with the restructuring mainly focusing on the workforce...". Unbelievable.

The workers of HP and Compaq were screwed as soon as HP's ex-CEO Carly Fiorina announced the merger. With the exception of HP's printing services, the merger created almost a 100% overlap. That means pink slips. The new CEO, Mark Hurd, will continue to layoff more workers. Even more forboding, his track record at his former place of employment indicates he will now attack the pension and option programs of employees.

Corporations care nothing for America save it's lenient tax laws. The current adiministration is unabashedly a proponent of big business and corporatism. This is tantamout to giving the American working class the proverbial finger.