Apple’s Workers Pay for Sculley’s Errors

So John Sculley is laying off employees because he made a mistake in pricing the computers, “Apple Lays Off 900; CEO Takes Pay Cut of 15%” (June 21).

The employees are paying for his mistake, while he goes laughing to the bank with his stock options. He has a salary of $2.2 million plus a bonus package of $14 million from a stock plan. He volunteered to take a 15% pay cut. Spare me the heroics.

Are all these layoffs necessary? If each employee makes an average of $50,000 and we multiply that by 900, that comes out to $45 million.

Is that enough to rehire all the employees? Maybe not, but it helps. After all, if Mr. Sculley were to sacrifice his bonus package, he could retain ($14 million divided by $50,000) 280 employees!

What does this man, or anyone else, need with that kind of salary? Chief executives in other countries make do with far smaller incomes and outperform our best tycoons. Sculley is just another vulture who sees American businesses as carcasses to pick over.

When CEOs go to their exclusive country clubs and wonder why American workers are not loyal to their companies, they need only examine their own one-sided practices.

Apple would be better served to have a CEO picked at random, from the 900 who were fired, and pay that person a much more modest salary.

ANDREW SERRANO

Los Angeles