Bill Johnson, Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) new CEO, is said to be making $3 million on his first day on the job when he starts on Wednesday.
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You read that correctly. On top of his $2.5 million base pay (that doesn’t even include stock options), Johnson is set to receive a one-time payment of $3 million on his first day.
“PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January in the face of billions of dollars in potential liability from huge wildfires in California in 2017 and 2018, including the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century. That blaze in November 2018 killed 86 people and destroyed most of the town of Paradise.
In March, PG&E asked a judge to allow it to pay $235 million in 2019 bonuses to thousands of employees despite its bankruptcy filing.”1
(There was a plan in 2018 to pay $130 million in bonuses but the company decided to scrap that given their worsening financial situation and the wildfires that year. However, attorneys for wildfire victims objected to the awards. As they should have especially since most people blame them for the fires.)
As you might imagine, one employee union argued that the decision was unfair to workers. (But that’s par for the course of Big Business putting profits over people.) But PG&E responded by saying “bonuses have historically constituted 6 to 20 percent of employees’ pay”1 and that their total compensation was “in line with the market and their peers in the utility space.”1
This year almost 10,000 employees are eligible for a bonus. While that includes managers or vice presidents, top-level execs who control company policy and/or report to the board of directors, are not slated for a bonus.
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