Circuit City lays off highest paid sales people in March, stock tanks, execs get bonuses!

[thewayne]

What insanity. They fired their highest paid sales peoples, 3,400 in all, to "save money". These people made $14 an hour or so. They were replaced with people making $9/hr. And were told that they could re-apply for their positions in TEN weeks, starting again at the bottom of the ladder.

Subsequently, the stock loses 3/4ths of its value. Gee, do you think that MAYBE the highest paid clerks were also the most knowledgeable and sold the most product? Nah, couldn't be. So now the company rewards the VPs with retention bonuses of a MILLION DOLLARS. That's 35 YEARS of wages to the clerks that were terminated.

The original firing

The Bonuses

And the Slashdot thread on the bonuses.

I wonder how long until the bankruptcy filing begins. A company that stupid does not deserve to live, and hopefully, will not.

Comments

[deborak]

This is an exact repeat of what they did in 2005; kick all the above minimum wage employees out and close extra stores. I can't understand why anyone who got caught in this encore purge is the least bit surprised.

[apostate-96.livejournal.com]

Hope can make people foolish, which I've learned from hard experience.

[apostate-96.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the company does not deserve to live. What really sucks is that the people who've fucked over all the other employees will make out OK in this, regardless of whether the company goes under or not. Those are the bastards who deserve to have their hot little sports cars slide under a gasoline tanker and have time to taste their own blood before being barbecued.

[silveradept]

They did it again? It was stupid shit the first time and they did it again? Aaaaaugh. There should be some way of enforcing unfair practices or some labor laws violation against the company for doing this.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the employees were not under contract, so the company could sack them if they wanted. They're getting pummeled on their stock, so I would imagine the next annual board meeting will be amusing.