European Workers Growing Uncivil

Highlights include 3M Company (MMM - Analyst Report), The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS - Snapshot Report), Sony Corp. (SNE - Snapshot Report) and American International Group, Inc. (AIG - Analyst Report).

Civilians Get Uncivilized Over Financial Malaise in Europe

In the Wall Street Journal today, it was reported that there have been several incidents of vandalism and other aggravated actions aimed at the high-powered "big-wigs" in Europe -- ranging from bank CEOs to factory management.

Recently, workers at a 3M (MMM - Analyst Report) factory in Europe held their boss hostage for 24 hours in order to protest planned layoffs. The manager was later released after certain deals regarding employment were met. More notably, a group of hooligans damaged windows and vandalized the car of former Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS - Snapshot Report) CEO Sir Fred Goodwin.

The group who took credit for this act, claiming that "this is just the beginning," is livid over bonuses and other compensation taken by CEOs and top-level management of companies whose stock prices have plummeted and have subsequently laid off thousands of workers. Sir Goodwin refused to give up his pension that gives him approximately $1 MM per year after leaving the company which has subsequently been taken over by the U.K. government.

In France, Sony (SNE - Snapshot Report) factory workers held a factory chief hostage overnight in order to get better terms for those employees being let go.

While I am not opposed to CEOs and other top-level employees being rewarded for hard work, growth and increasing enterprise and shareholder value, I feel the same should be true when companies face severe downturns -- particularly when it is due to management creed or lack of proper intra-business checks and balances.

Paying out hefty bonuses, pensions and stock options during times of growing unemployment and earnings losses seems immoral at best. Luckily, the U.S. has not seen the sort of violent repercussion observed in Europe but I wouldn’t be surprised if these things did happen. It is not without reason that Edward Liddy, CEO of AIG (AIG - Analyst Report), refused to divulge names of the recipients who received several million dollars in bonuses, as they would likely be targets of public outrage.

This sort of greed, focusing on short-term benefits and the "holier than thou" mentality have been major contributors to the current economic and financial mess we are in. It is sad that governments have to come in and slap big banks and other institutions on the hand for behaving like irresponsible children.

While I am not knocking capitalism, which I strongly believe in, I am not naïve in thinking that without proper regulation, abuses will occur. To quote a line from the movie Spiderman: "With great power comes great responsibility."

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