Oct 03, 2001, 11:25pm

The news today is that Nortel is laying off another 19,000 of their staff.

I wonder how much of John Roth's little bonus and salary he got himself this summer would have gone to keeping some of those jobs. This company is tanking not so much because of the failing tech market (mind you that is a big cause), but also because of joke leadership at the top.

Nortel lost $20 billion dollars last year. But Roth got himself unanimously voted back in as CEO, and  along with the $135 MILLION he made for himself in salaries, bonuses and stock options in 2000, and the sweetheart stock option deal that lets him sell his stock this year, back to the company, for $118 a share even though it is valued below $20 during most of his selloff. And do you think Roth would do the moral right thing and say, okay Nortel, you're hurting, tens of thousands of people will be out of jobs, so I'm not going to make the company bleed further red by demanding these options be met?

Of course not. Roth has continued to exercise his options, and put the company further into debt. My prime guess is this latest round of layoffs is directly related to Roth's immense greed, and probably wouldn't have been nearly as severe.

It is my opinion that Roth is a criminal. Not on paper, per se, but in a moral and practical sense. He took $135 million last year. This year he will probably take almost as much, but the numbers won't be known until all the filings are done. With $135 million dollars you could pay roughly 3800 people a $35,000 a year salary and probably have enough left over for the paperwork. Three thousand, eight hundred people. All in one man's one year salary. And if you make it two years - in other words, if Roth hadn't cost the company a potential 270 million dollars in two years, you could have saved some 8000 jobs this year.

Is that obscene or what?

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