Hightower Lowdown

Meet Robert Miller, one of the top shredders of America's social contract. A 'corporate turnaround specialist,' he was brought in as CEO of Delphi last July in the wake of an accounting scandal that involved various top executives and has hobbled the company. After only three months at the helm, Miller announced his plan: slash the wages and benefits of those on the line, terminate health care for retirees, and move more of Delphi's work offshore. Everyone must sacrifice, he told the workers, to make Delphi competitive. Everyone? Workers soon learned that only one day before announcing his austerity plan, Miller had quietly instituted a special $110-million bonus package for the 21 top executives working under him! This was on top of their regular salaries, mind you. Especially infuriating to the rank and file is that 14 of the select executives had been complicitous in the accounting fraud. There was such a public blow-up over this gob of corporate greed that, a week later, Miller made another announcement: he and the other execs now wanted to share the workers' pain. Delphi's number two honcho would take a 20% cut in salary, and the other 20 executives were taking a 10% cut. How munificent. Workers were hardly impressed, noting that these bosses were trying to impose a wage cut of more than 60% on them—and were still in line to get those bonuses! Miller tried to deflect criticism of himself by pointing out that he was never included in the bonus plan. Also, he declared that he was magnanimously reducing his salary to $1 a year. Grabbing the mantle of working-class hero, Miller then said woefully, "I can be fired tomorrow with no severance, no pension, no bonus, not even a ticket home." Yes, but before we all join Bob in a chorus of "Solidarity Forever," notice that he is sitting on the soft cushion of a $3 million signing bonus he got when he joined Delphi six months ago. He says he has no intention of giving that up.