Canadian companies quietly made sure CEOs still got their bonuses

August 18, 2021 4:15 PM

"Millions of working Canadians saw their incomes devastated by the pandemic — but according to a new report, dozens of top executives saw their bonus formulas tweaked to make sure they didn’t suffer alongside the rank and file." (Archive link)
posted by clawsoon (12 comments total)

Hippity hoppity if these assholes don't start reigning it in it'll soon be time for chippity choppity.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:35 PM on August 18, 2021 [18 favorites]

Twenty-four companies altered the formulas used to determine bonuses, the report found, such as the weighting or percentage scores; these included Laurentian Bank and George Weston Ltd.

Ah. Not just content to fix bread prices.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:04 PM on August 18, 2021 [8 favorites]

We're all in this together, my ass.
posted by Kitteh at 5:09 PM on August 18, 2021 [10 favorites]

I mean, serfdom is a kind of togetherness with the lord of the manor, no?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:11 PM on August 18, 2021 [17 favorites]

It’s good to be the king.
posted by darkstar at 5:35 PM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

If we're dumping on Canadian business executives, can I add this to the pile?
posted by sardonyx at 8:00 PM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

It's been happening here NZ too, especially quangos and govt departments;
Air NZ , ACC (no fault accident govt backed insurance), and companies. Few of these are stellar performers, it's just a game they make us play.
posted by unearthed at 9:11 PM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Norway always get good press on the Blue, but our executives are also prone to similar behaviour (article in Norwegian, about the airline Norwegian, which paid out massive bonuses to executives after helping themselves to government-backed cheap loans during COVID)
posted by Harald74 at 10:41 PM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Executive bonuses are the biggest fucking scam in the world.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:37 AM on August 19, 2021 [9 favorites]

This is not news. It's a feature.

I do believe that compared to 2008, more help this time around was directed at lower-income people, but I've stopped counting the ways in which people with savings or assets have prospered during the pandemic, while those below this line have mostly just been scraping by.

I'm waiting to see how the upper-crust wiggles out of paying their fair share of the COVID-incurred debts, despite profiting from it.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:47 AM on August 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Bailouts for landlords.
posted by darkstar at 8:05 AM on August 19, 2021

I'd say all bonuses are a scam. Just who's getting scammed depends on what level.

Non-executive position with nebulous "performance" based bonuses? You're never maxing it out, if you get it. They'll tie the bonus money to a larger metric, so even if you hit performance targets, then you're team didn't, or your office didn't, or the company didn't do well enough to fill up the bonus pool. Although somehow the company still well enough for the C suite and a few chosen inner circle members to get their bonuses.

I knew one person who was about to meet their yearly performance targets in June, and suddenly the targets were revised to more than double. It's all one big scam.
posted by ghost phoneme at 8:05 AM on August 19, 2021 [6 favorites]