Jim Owens paid $17,700,000.00 on the Peoria.com Forums

Good think Cat is laying off so many, he might not have made that much. Poor guy was probably hoping for 20mil

When you are in charge of the well-being of 80 or 90,000 people and their families and you have to answer to shareholders and directors, 17 million isn't that big a number. I don't know the guy, but I'll bet he doesn't want to lay off people. Who would want to lay off people?

if he was to cut back on his income and bonus they wouldnt have to lay off so many now would they

Well, they'd still have to lay off the workers because there is no work for them to do.

There is always work that can be done at a factory, but then again their Union may not like them doing some of the jobs.

Crodseth is right. There are maybe a handful of people in the world who could do what Jim Owens does. Otherwise, Caterpillar could end up in the same boat as GM. Peoria is still a whole lot better than Flint or Detroit. So while 17.7 million does seem like a lot (and it is) I'm glad that Caterpillar hasn't suffered the gross mismanagement we've seen with the auto industry. Is Caterpillar perfect? Of course not. But show me any company that is.

PeoriaIllinoisan,

They aren't laying people off due to production, if that was the case they wouldn't be "permanent" layoffs.. Most companies that layoff due to production rehire when production picks up.


CAT is laying off workers to outsource to cheaper labor. THAT is what CAT is doing.. I think they should be renamed RAT.

Good for him. It just goes to show that hard work, dedication, education and determination can still pay off in America. He's still underpaid in relation to other CEO's of companies comparable in size to Cat.

Owens' compensation was for his performance in 2008. I'm sure he's not expecting such a hefty sum for 2009.

The class envy crowd can rest easy, though. Most of that money will be sucked up by the IRS.

I have a friend that used to supervise contract (i.e. OUTSOURCED) workers in a production role, but the contract workers were the first to go. While I don't claim to know the overall intentions of the upper management, I'm quite certain that their not just firing full-on employees to replace them with outsourced work.

One of the first groups to get the lay-offs was with their global help desk, which had about 90 contract workers in India and about 120 here in Peoria. ALL OF THEM were let go, and there are now former factory workers from Mossville trying to provide tech support for computers. This, in my mind, illustrates that they are trying to hang on to as many CAT employees as they can while they mitigate the problems in the economy.

Just thought I'd clarify...

I am sorry when anyone loses a job but when did the expectation that a company had an obligation to keep every employee start? A company should be allowed to come up with new strategies and goals without becoming a punching bag.

Most of the layoffs aren't "permanent", they are indefinite. Cat has already said they are going to rehire people when demand picks back up, which it hasn't.
Mossville is the exception, it has been no secret that they were moving the Mossville plant for several years now.

Owens has a very tough job, Im not going to bash him for being compensated well.

"They aren't laying people off due to production"

You are wrong. It most certainly has everything to do with production.

laying off people and moving those jobs to Texas.

or further South.

PI...if you wrote that blog/appeal to Jim Owens...

nice work