Thread: Big 3 take own jets to grovel for cash

Big 3 take own jets to grovel for cash



BY HELEN KENNEDY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, November 20th 2008, 4:28 AM

Hey, Detroit, here's a little tip: When you send your corporate honchos to D.C. to plead poverty and beg humbly for a taxpayer-funded bailout, don't send them on luxury private jets.

It just looks really, really bad.



The heads of Detroit's Big Three auto companies used their corporate jets to fly into Washington to plead for $25 billion - to the intense annoyance of the lawmakers they were begging from.

"There's a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand," Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Queens) told the CEOs of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler at a House hearing. "It's like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. Kind of makes you a little bit suspicious," he said.

"Couldn't you all have downgraded to first class? Or jet-pooled? It would have at least sent the message that you do get it."

The automakers clearly do not "get it." The honchos were asked if they would consider cutting their annual salaries to $1, a symbolic gesture that ex-Chrysler head Lee Iacocca famously made when the feds bailed him out 30 years ago. "I don't have a position on that today," said GM's Rick Wagoner, who got $14 million last year. Ford's Alan Mulally flatly refused. "I think I'm okay where I am," he said.

Mulally took $22 million home last year. The swanky company Gulfstream is a perk in his contract: He uses it to fly from Michigan to his home in Seattle every weekend.

Chrysler head Robert Nardelli was the only one of the three who said he would give up his salary to save his firm. Without irony, the CEOs assured Congress they had tightened their belts, cutting hundreds of workers and closing dozens of plants.

"Obviously we're all slashing back every expense that's not critical to the business," said Wagoner.

When ABC News, which first revealed the CEOs took corporate jets, asked them if they saw nothing wrong with spending $20,000 for a 11/2-hour flight, Wagoner said he had a very busy schedule.

Mulally and Nardelli wouldn't comment.

All three could have flown nonstop on US Air Flight 3946 from Detroit to D.C. for $212 apiece, round-trip. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) called it "insane" to use luxury jets to plead poverty and asked the three CEOs if any planned to sell their planes and head home commercially.

No hands went up.

Mark Brenner, who runs a Detroit union publication called Labor Notes, said the auto makers' tone-deaf performance could hurt their case for a bailout - and that would only end up hurting ordinary workers. "[Lawmakers] might want to stick it to them out of spite," Brenner said. "While I completely understand the desire to punish the people who made such colossal mistakes, who is going to pay the price? It's all these hundreds of thousands of workers," he said.

United Auto Worker chief Ron Gettelfinger, who testified with the three CEOs, took US Air to Washington, the union said.

Originally Posted by Little Wing

too bad the military didn't just shoot them out of the sky. now that would have been funny.