Wages And Salaries

Here's the vacation no one wants, courtesy of the recession: forced time off without pay. Financially struggling universities, factories and even hospitals are requiring employees to take unpaid "furloughs" -- temporary layoffs that amount to one-time pay cuts for workers and a cost savings for employers. This year, the number of temporarily laid off workers hit a 17-year high.

Laura Martinez's first job in California was at a garment factory, piecing together trendy clothes 60 hours a week. She was paid by task -- a hemline was worth 14 cents, a sleeve 24 cents. Sometimes it averaged out to minimum wage, but most times it didn't. She did this for eight years. Eventually, she filed a claim with the state for unpaid wages and won -- she was owed nearly $30,000.

Walt Disney Co. reported Friday that Chief Executive Robert Iger was awarded total compensation of $30.6 million last year, up 11% from 2007. Steve Jobs, Disney's biggest shareholder, is up for reelection to the board, the Burbank-based media company said in a regulatory filing. Jobs announced this week he's taking a medical leave from Apple Inc. for the first half of this year. Iger's salary was unchanged at $2 million. Net income at Disney, the second-largest U.S. media company, fell 5.

Welcome to Hollywood's new movie math. Thanks to the nose dive in the economy and, even more troubling to the movie industry, declining DVD sales that have propped up the business for years, the studios are hammering down the generous financial deals long enjoyed by the most established stars and filmmakers.

Yahoo Inc.'s employees will forgo their usual pay raises this year as the slumping Internet company struggles to boost its profit in a brutal recession. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company confirmed the salary freeze Thursday, the day after informing employees of the decision. The austerity measure marks one of the first cost-cutting actions taken by Yahoo's new chief executive, Carol Bartz, who was hired two weeks ago to engineer a turnaround.

As the stock market continues to founder, more companies -- especially tech firms -- are looking for ways to bring relief to workers whose compensation is largely tied to their employers' share prices. In January alone, more companies have offered to exchange or reprice stock options that have little chance of quick payoffs for their owners than in all of 2007, research firm Equilar Inc. said Friday.

Occidental Petroleum Corp., under fire for the outsized pay of its chief executive, Ray R. Irani, has agreed to give shareholders a limited voice in deciding how much the Los Angeles oil company pays its top executives. The "say-on-pay" policy will give shareholders a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation decisions made by the company's board of directors, Occidental said Monday. The new policy will go into effect at the company's 2010 annual meeting.

American International Group Inc., the insurer saved from collapse by government money after losses on credit-default swaps, offered about $450 million in retention pay to employees of the unit that sold the derivatives, according to two people familiar with the situation. About 400 workers at the financial products unit may get the money in two installments, said the people, who declined to be named because details of the payments were confidential.

New York's attorney general issued subpoenas Tuesday to former Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive John Thain and Bank of America Corp.'s chief administrative officer, J. Steele Alphin, amid an investigation into bonuses that Merrill paid executives just before it was sold to Bank of America. Thain, 53, was serving as head of the newly combined company's wealth management division before he resigned last week.

Congress on Tuesday sent the White House what is expected to be the first legislation President Obama signs into law: a bill that makes it easier for women and others to sue for pay discrimination, even if the discrimination has prevailed for years, even decades. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama would sign it Thursday during a public ceremony.