DailyDirt: Giving Back To Employees

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Income inequality is a topic that has been circulating recently (partially from Robert Reich's movie "Inequality for All"), and as stats about income growth/stagnation are thrown around, there have been a few examples of corporate leaders trying to recognize their employees' hard work. Here are just some of the rare CEOs/founders who have taken a small stab at wealth redistribution from their own personal pockets.

• Lenovo's CEO Yang Yuanqing has distributed $3.25 million (of his own $4.23 million bonus) to thousands of hourly workers -- roughly giving them $335 per person. This is the second year in a row that Yang has done this, and it's slightly more than last year's bonus. It's a nice gesture, but how long will it continue? [url]
• The family-run firm Nominit in Sweden is paying out about $16.3 million (114 million kronor) to current and former employees -- because the company's two founders and owners have no heirs. The company manufactures rivets, and its ownership will be transferred to a foundation dedicated to the well-being of former and current employees. [url]
• Next CEO Simon Wolfson shared all of his $3.6 million cash bonus with employees, and he's the first CEO in the UK to make such a generous gift to employees of a public company. CEOs sometimes donate their bonuses to charity, but distributing money back to employees (of public companies) hasn't caught on the UK (or the US). [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: bonus, ceo, charity, generosity, inequality, management, robert reich, wealth distribution