When You’re a Jet….

For those in General Motors Corp. who really need their jobs and really earn their pay, for the governmental bodies who rely on the economic flow (their tax base) generated from General Motors to fund necessary public benefits, and for the suppliers & dealers for whom a senior general management misstep spells utter disaster and for the communities whose small businesses need customers to keep their modest lives moving along, I ask why GM CEO Chief Executive Officer Richard Wagoner Jr. and his cronies are still in charge? The big three automakers were chastised by Congress and the press alike for taking three separate corporate jets to their recent “beg Congress for a bailout” mission. They’ve agreed to “jet-pool” on their next mission.

But GM executives still do not seem to get it; their very actions threaten those who deserve or need a second chance. They don’t seem to understand that their world has changed, that they just are going to have to let go of pay and perks that should have rewarded success but instead created huge benefits in failure. They battled to cling to the “bigger is better” philosophy, while mass-producing automakers elsewhere understood the global resource and economic factors mandating a downsizing in car and truck size. GM management has been consistently wrong in its major decision-making.

Listen to what they have done now. Bloomberg on November 27: “General Motors, criticized by U.S. lawmakers for its use of corporate jets, asked aviation regulators [the Federal Aviation Administration] to block the public’s ability to track a plane it uses… ‘We availed ourselves of the option as others do to have the aircraft removed’ from a Federal Aviation Administration tracking service, a GM spokesman, Greg Martin, said [November 26] in an interview. He declined to discuss why GM made the request.” They just don’t want us to know about their continued wasteful perks! Sure they’ve canceled a couple of jet leases, but guess who’s still flying high? That picture up there is the inside of GM CEO Wagoner’s jet. Nice perk for a failed executive, huh?

Look, I’m not fond of jet fuel-guzzling corporate jets in a declining environment, but I also believe that success should be rewarded. That’s “success,” not bad habits. And manufacturing small private aircraft does support jobs, but enough is enough already. I’m torn in this debate.

What I am not torn about is pulling private jet travel from a senior management whose planning and leadership (or lack thereof) have slammed GM into the ground. They cry that it is the general economy that is at fault, and no one can deny the massive impact of tight credit, a contracting gross domestic product, rising unemployment and lack of consumer confidence. They screamed earlier when gas prices soared; it just wasn’t their fault. But Toyota, Nissan and Honda posted a profit last year while GM nose-dived even before the market crash. I’ve already blogged on relative pay levels between successful Toyota management and the fools at GM – the disparity is amazing. GM sacked lots of workers; Toyota did not. What’s wrong with this picture?

As Congress and the new Administration face the automakers again, GM’s profoundly stupid attempt to preserve its executive perk package as the world melts around them seems to guarantee that there will (or at least should) be at least three requirements (among many) if there is to be a taxpayer cash infusion into this sector in general and GM in particular: massive senior management pay cuts, the removal of private jet travel to those in charge… and… the replacement of the troika that leads GM today (chief executive, operating and financial officers). It’s too bad the board of directors and the shareholders – whose stock price has all but disappeared – didn’t act sooner.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.