'Cut salaries at top' to save economy

If you were a Chief Executive Officer (CEO), would you forego a bonus for the benefit of your company? In the current economic crisis, Gulf News readers strongly believe such steps are necessary.

Epifanio G. Paredes, a Filipino expatriate, said: "If the company requires maintaining such people in the corporation then they should keep them, but at least reduce their salaries. It would make a big difference in terms of savings."

Paredes added that if a company needed manpower, it would be best to lessen the pay given to high-level management as it would help reduce the number of lower level employees being made redundant.

He said: "There are many people in high positions who have similar jobs and many lower level employees who are important in the company's operations. I think it is logical to reduce top management's salaries to make up for the other workers in the company."

Salman Asif, a 29-year-old senior sales executive, also thought that the exorbitant salaries that company executives earn should be reduced to help companies survive.

The Pakistani national said companies could make use of the money thus saved to help maintain their budget, and simultaneously keep all their employees on the payroll.

According to Asif, employee lay-offs should be a company's last resort. However, he said: "If worse comes to worse, instead of making many lower level employees redundant, it would be more effective to remove one company executive."

Asif added that firms would not save much by laying off regular employees.

He said: "If anything, I think it would lead to a bigger crisis, as those employees would have nowhere to go."

Underlining the need to look at the situation on a case-by-case basis, Tim Crowe, a British business consultant, suggested salary cuts for CEOs - but only if the company was really suffering.

He said: "If the company reduces a senior employee's salary, they would still have that person's services, while saving their business money."

However, in the case of companies that are not heavily affected, Crowe thought that a salary cut was not necessary.

He said: "Firms should cut back on salaries and bonuses only in the most desperate cases."

However, keeping in mind the lower-level employees, Indian expatriate Bindu Sathianesan, a 36-year-old administration assistant, said that in order to save people from being made redundant, all a company had to do was to cut a CEO's bonus.

Sathianesan said: "When one says 'bonus', one actually means extra money. It would not affect the CEO, but would save the company a great amount of money to help it survive."

She added: "Giving huge packages and bonuses to a CEO, while many regular employees are being made redundant, does not make sense to me."