Wages And Salaries

Honda Motor Co. said Monday that managers' salaries would be slashed 5% starting next month to cope with sliding sales. The cut comes on top of the 10% pay reduction for directors announced last month. The move affects about 4,800 managers at Honda group companies in Japan, but not those hired by Honda's overseas units, the company said. The reduction continues through May, and what happens after that is still undecided, it said. Japan's No.

Facing further declines in sales, Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday that it would eliminate bonuses for 3,000 employees, cut executive pay and reduce shifts at its plants in North America. The world's largest automaker saw its U.S. sales fall 15% last year and 32% in January compared with the same month a year earlier. Breaking from custom, the company has not released a forecast for U.S. industry sales in 2009 because the market is so unpredictable.

With the city of Los Angeles expected to face a $400-million to $500-million deficit in the 2009-10 fiscal year as the national economy continues to sour, Times editors asked 5th District City Council candidates in the March 3 primary how they would handle negotiations with key public safety employees. Here are excerpts from their answers to this question: -- In June, the city's contracts with police and firefighters unions will expire.

An effort to curb executive pay at the nation's most troubled banks, inserted at the last minute into Congress' mammoth economic stimulus bill, has sparked an outcry from financial services groups and others who warn the caps could harm the government's efforts to revive the economy. During final negotiations on the $787-billion package last week, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.

General Electric Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt declined a 2008 bonus and millions of dollars in performance awards, saying Wednesday that the company's falling profit and share price prompted him to forgo the payments. The Fairfield, Conn.-based conglomerate, which makes locomotives, appliances and many other goods, said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Immelt would not receive his $11.7-million long-term performance award.

The chief executive of struggling housing developer KB Home Corp., Jeffrey T. Mezger, received more than $9.6 million in compensation in fiscal 2008, the Westwood company said Friday. KB Home, California's largest home builder, lost nearly $1 billion last year as the industry was battered by a glut of foreclosed homes that undercut the prices of new residences and shrank demand. Buyers were also discouraged by the reeling economy and challenges finding loans.

You can't open up a sports section or read a sports blog without being bombarded by story after story about Manny Ramirez's tumultuous contract negotiations with the Dodgers. The whole affair has an air of melodrama, punctuated with more bitter recriminations, wounded egos and thinly veiled threats than a Middle East peace conference. But from my perch, what is most fascinating is the astoundingly public nature of the negotiations, with the most intricate financial details all out in the open.

A group of Walt Disney Co. shareholders wants a say on the wages and benefits paid to the company's executives. The proposal would give Disney investors a nonbinding, advisory vote on the pay packages given to Chief Executive Bob Iger and other top executives. The measure reflects growing investor ire over generous executive compensation.

The chief executive of bailed-out American International Group Inc. tried Wednesday to defuse public outrage over bonuses paid to key employees whose complex dealings fell apart and helped cause the company's breakdown and fuel the worldwide financial crisis. But his efforts appeared to be too little, too late. Edward M.

In frantically rushing to the rescue of American International Group Inc. last fall, Treasury Department officials negotiated a $40-billion deal that explicitly allowed the company to set aside tens of millions of dollars for executive bonuses and richly reward individual senior executives without restrictions or any concern that the government might interfere.