Thursday, March 25, 2010

Ahead of union vote, a look at Lee executives salaries

On Saturday, St. Louis Newspaper Guild members at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch will vote on Lee's "final offer" five-year contract. That offer includes a 6 percent pay cut through September 2015, a one-week unpaid furlough in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and a possible "snap-back" salary increase in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Which gives us an opportunity to look at the salary of Lee's leaders. According to the company's proxy statement released in January:

Name2009 salary2009 compensation2008 salary2008 compensation
CEO Mary E. Junck$833,654$882,454$850,000$1,089,506
CFO Carl G. Schmidt$472,731$612,831$482,000$681,492
VP Greg R. Veon$354,058$381,337$361,000$487,315
VP Kevin D. Mowbray$328,558$353,328$335,000$452,383
VP Vytenis P. Kuraitis$262,846$283,413$268,000$370,266

Salaries for each executive decreased by 1.92 percent -- or approximately a one-week unpaid furlough. Total compensation includes bonuses, stock awards and retirement account contributions; fewer of those were awarded. From 2007 to 2008, each executive's salary increased by more than 3 percent.

If Junck followed the salary guidelines and furloughs the union will vote on:
6 percent pay cutFurloughSnap-backAnnual salary
2010$799,000$16,346.15$782,653.85
2011$799,000$16,346.15$782,653.85
2012$799,000$16,346.15$782,653.85
2013$799,000$19,975$818,975
2014$799,000$40,948.75$839,948.75
2015$799,000$62,996.16$861,996.16
Furlough represents one-week's salary, calculated by dividing the annual salary by 52 weeks. The "snap-back" is added if the company increases its annual revenue by at least 2 percent, which I am assuming in this example, and will result in a salary increase of 2.5 percent in the last three years of the contract.

If Mowbray, who in addition to being a vice president of publishing is also the publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, followed the same salary reduction and furlough schedule:
6 percent pay cutFurloughSnap-back Annual salary
2010$314,900$6,442.31$308,457.69
2011$314,900$6,442.31$308,457.69
2012$314,900$6,442.31$308,457.69
2013$314,900$7,872.50$322,772.50
2014$314,900$16,138.62$331,038.62
2015$314,900$24,827.90$339,727.90

From 2008 to 2015, Junck's and Mowbray's salaries would have increased by 1.41 percent (assuming, of course, that there were no bonuses or other additional compensation).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Disgusting

Anonymous said...

What about their stock options? (Not that they're worth much these days...)

Anonymous said...

The Guild approved the contract, according to stltoday.com:

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/E2732A2CAC9F227F862576F3006FA300?OpenDocument

They probably had no choice. The continuation of the Post-Dispatch into another Lee small-town clone continues.