How is this for poor timing? Just as walkouts get under way at the AstraZeneca site in Macclesfield, UK, over plans to end contributions to a defined benefit pension plan (back story), there is the revelation that the pension for AstraZeneca ceo David Brennan has grown by 50 percent in the past two years and will now provide him approximately $1.4 million annually, according to The Manchester Evening News.
"It is particularly shocking that, at the very time when this hugely profitable company is attacking GMB members’ pensions, its chief executive, David Brennan, has reached third in the UK league of the top bosses' pension entitlements," Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union, tells the paper. "When he retires based on today’s figures, Mr. Brennan will enjoy a pension of more than £17,500 per week. This is in sharp contrast with the decision to freeze pensionable pay for the UK's AstraZeneca workers. It is another case of boardroom greed and a culture which is summed up by ‘do as I say not as I do’."
The pension disclosure was made by TUC, the Trades Union Council, in a new report on pensions given directors of large UK companies (look here). AstraZeneca tells the paper, though, that Brennan's pension is not 'directly comparable' to those of the workers because Brennan, who has worked for the drugmaker for 34 years, joined in the US and is part of the US defined benefit scheme, which contains different terms.
More than 140 GMB union members joined last week's first two-hour strike and he four-hour stoppage taking place today is due to be followed by an all-day walk out next Wed., Sept. 22. One worker on last week's first picket line tells the paper that: "I've worked for the company for 31 years and the value of my pension is frozen at 2010 levels."
11 Comments
Mr. Brennan ranks near the bottom of the list of top paid pharma CEO'S. Let's cut the guy a break.
http://www.fiercepharma.com/special-reports/top-17-paychecks-big-pharma
REPS are the ones who should have their pensions cut. When I worked in my cubicle it used to gall me to no end knowing that our reps were smoking hot, getting of work at 2pm, and made more money than me.
Cut em all!
Okay, pharmavet imposter. You can use the handle all you want from now on. I'm changing mine, but you won't know what it is.
The "real" pharmavet.
Brennan is in the top 3 pensioners in the UK, he benefits from living/working between 2 countries. PhRMA chairman and US health reform participant: he says
"Together, with our principals as a compass, we’ll continue to build productive partnerships, support cost containment, advocate pro-innovation policies and promote people gaining access to the best treatments and medicines.
Thank you for listening.
And thank you for a wonderful year as chairman of this great organization."
I'm sure the UK AstraZeneca workers who have pensions frozen appreciate his retirement package having different terms due to being a US/UK company chief. (not)
Face it, this is corporate greed at its finest,and to imagine AZ thinks 10K is a decent settlement amount to give to diabetes (permanent, lifelong, life limiting disease)plaintiffs from taking the billion dollar drug Seroquel.
Think Brennan cares about the US health reform for personal reasons or for the safety and health of Americans? $$$$think
At about $25K a week, on top of other personal investments, real estate etc. the guy is going to retire high on the hog. Tell that to the workers in UK on strike.
I have just come off the picket line at AZ. The unity of the workers is getting stronger with other union members joining the GMB.
People that have worked for AZ for years and now are having their pensionable pay frozen, stand to lose hundreds of thousands from their pension pot. While a certain CEO has millions put into his in a single year.
Is that fair ??? I think not.
Hail to the Chief! Every *man* (sic) for himself! Thatcher doctrine AZ ever! Feel good to be Britshit-upon?
them that's got shall have, them that's not shall lose...
You picketers in the UK should be familiar with this quote:
-" I would much prefer to bring them down [The Labour Party] as soon as possible. I think they've made the biggest financial mess that any government's ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite characteristic of them. Then they start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they're now trying to control everything by other means. They're progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people"
-Margaret Thatcher
Now go rejoin your Komrades on the picket lines.
Anti-labour: Indeed, Thatcher still has an awful lot to pay for. Bring on the revolution Bring on the Real IRA Let battle commence The capitalist abusers shall have the tyres on their Rolls slashed, their mansions pillaged, and their trophy women desecrated. You have been warned.
Likeitis: Are you railing against Thatcher or rather against King Edward I or the Right Rev. Ian Paisley? Hard to tell. Perhaps it's authority figures in general. Or maybe you're really recruiting for Sinn Fein. Show us your hand, please.
Anti-labour: You got it! Thatcher and her brood are responsible for turning everyone into self-seeking yes-men. And who can blame them? Please the boss - get rewarded with an easy life (and retirement, or not, eh, AZ men?) The rub is that the capitalist elite have parleyed this forelock-touching into a power base for extreme greedy, extravagant, obscene self enrichment. As a scientist, I see as a corollary to this that nobody will take risks and make inventions any longer; almost everyone in the yes-man companies thinks that they can get their rewards more comfortably (poor fools, eh, AZ men?) Innovative, ground-breaking, honest Anglo-Saxon culture has been changed.....for ever. That is, its DEAD. Thanks a bunch, Marge and Raygun.