While your severance pay hangs by a thread, Sears filed a detailed document asking the bankruptcy court to grant generous retention bonuses to convince 18 highly paid top executives to not jump ship from Sears. So they will be paid a bonus up to $243,000 (roughly half their salary before benefits) if they agree to stick around until April 2019. Keep in mind these are the same people that have been running the company into the ground for the last several years.
Another Key Employee Retention Program will allow 322 selected employees to split up to $17 million if they agree to stay for up to a year. Sears claims these employees and their families will suffer hardships and stress not being sure their salaries (averaging around $175k) will still be around a year from now. There are country club memberships, private school tuition, vacation homes, and luxury car and house payments at risk if they are not rewarded with extra compensation. And since Sears and Kmart are laying off so many minimum wageish positions, there will be new money available to pay this deluxe group of workers who have been a part of the Sears family and way of doing business for more than a decade on average.
Rewarding Failure 101
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