Public Employee Press

The World of Work
It’s great being fired

Ordinarily, workers can only look forward to an unemployment check when they’re handed a pink slip.

But under the perverse folkways of our economy, Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli got a $210 million severance package Jan. 3 when he was fired. That would pay about 15,000 workers $7.25 an hour (the new federal minimum wage Democrats are pressing for) for an entire year.

“We are talking about a very real inequality in our society where a very small number of people are monopolizing almost all of the increased wealth and most of the people are getting none of it,” U.S. Congress member Barney Frank of Massachusetts said.