Obscenity at Hewlett-Packard: When greed is (NOT) good

From the Times, one of the true obscenities of the year:

Hewlett-Packard announced Tuesday that it will lay off 14,500 workers, or nearly 10 percent of its staff, over the next 18 months as part of a revamping plan that the company's executives hope will turn around the struggling fortunes of the giant computer and printer maker...

The company also announced that starting Jan. 1, it would no longer contribute to the pension plans of its employees in the United States...

While the company will offer a voluntary retirement program, [CEO Mark] Hurd said "the majority of the head count reductions will be achieved through involuntary actions."

The company expects to complete the layoffs by November 2006, which marks the start of its fiscal year 2007. By that point, the company estimates that it will save $1.6 billion annually on labor costs with an additional $300 million in annual savings from reduced pension costs.

(Um, "involuntary actions"?)

Look, I'm a capitalist. I like business. Unregulated, it's a monster, but, properly regulated, it's part of the foundation of any healthy liberal society.

But as guest blogger Michael Hiltzik argues at Political Animal, "this is another example of how the rank and file pays the price of management derelictions and blunders, while the guilty get off scot-free". How so? Well, 10 percent of HP's workforce will soon be subject to "involuntary actions". That is: Laid off. Let go. Terminated. Get it? Meanwhile, former CEO Carly Fiorina, who resigned in February, received a $21 million severance package, along with a $7 million bonus and another $23.5 million in pension and benefit payouts. That's $51.5 million!

14,500 HP employees will soon be paying the price for executive incompetence -- because, in today's corporate America, share price means more than loyalty. 3,000 employees have already been laid off this year, and another 17,900 were let go after HP's failed merger with Compaq in 2002. Do the math. Fiorina walks away with $51.5 million while 35,400 employees, many of whom no doubt face hardship or worse, are terminated.

That's obscene. Truly, utterly, and outrageously obscene.