Back to Boeing…
On December 23, 2019, Dennis Muilenburg , CEO of Boeing resigned. All Boeing 737MAX airplanes were grounded after flights of the airplane crashed due to equipment failure, taking with them countless lives. A tragedy. Full stop.
Emails from a Boeing employee noted that key safety systems were being deleted, indicating that this issue was known and ignored by the company.
As the CEO, the buck should stop at Dennis Muilenburg. And it…did?
If you’re lucky, if you’re laid off, you get severance – additional money for your time served to hold you over until you find another job. It may be on the order of one or two months’ of salary/wages, which, if you make the median U.S. annual income of $63,000, gets you about $5,250 to $10,000.
No surprise, corporate executives also get severance – including Mr. Muilenburg. Per Page 47 of the latest Boeing proxy statement, Mr. Muilenburg is entitled to $6.6 Million in cash following a layoff (or 100x time the median U.S. annual income). But the cash is only one component of his severance package. The proxy statement values his total severance package, which includes stock awards, at over $30 Million.
For screwing up.
I personally believe in the social safety net, including unemployment benefits. I think we’re all better off, and that it’s the right thing to do – to help people who find themselves in an unfortunate circumstance. In California, unemployment insurance is based on your previous employment, but capped. It’s capped at $450/week for 26 weeks, or $11,700.
Given that Mr. Muilenberg made over $50 million dollars as Boeing’s CEO in the last three years, I think he’s going to be fine. Hard to imagine why he should receive another $30 Million dollars – over two and a half THOUSAND times more than unemployment insurance – for doing worse than nothing.
Pay your people – fairly,
The Anxious Amateur Economist
The Anxious, Amateur Economist 