Outrageous!

28 April 2005
Tucson

How do some people sleep? Jack Nasser – who did a mediocre job of running Ford – and some cohorts have, apparently, ‘earned’ ten of millions of dollars in fees as Polaroid emerges from bankruptcy and is sold to a company in Minneapolis. Some 6000 retirees of the company who lost health benefits and their company retirement benefits each received $47.00. That’s right, $47.00. Let me write it out: forty-seven dollars.

What is going on here? What sort of a country do we live in when this kind of injustice is permitted? I saw an interview with one of the Polaroid retirees the other day, a gentleman of about 70. He was an electrical engineer. He retired with about $250,000 of his savings in Polaroid shares. His plan had been to play golf and, as he put it, have some fun. The value of the shares after the bankruptcy was nearly nothing.

He goes to the golf course every day now but, not to play; he has a job there, driving a mower. I hope that the golf course provides its employees health insurance but I doubt it!