The Israel Chemicals Ltd. (TASE: ICL) workers committee has launched a campaign against the NIS 203 million in options awarded to the company's managers. The options have infuriated the workers committee, which is demanding that management share the company's profits with the rank and file.
Israel Chemicals' board of directors approved options grants to 300 managers, including 14 senior executives. Israel Chemicals president and CEO Akiva Mozes will get options worth NIS 20.4 million and chairman Nir Gilad will get options worth NIS 14.8 million. In explaining the options, the company said that the incentives plan for "talented and skilled" managers was aimed at keeping them at the company over the long term.
> Israel Chemicals posted a net profit of $570 million in January-September 2009, after posting a profit of $2.75 billion in 2007-08, and has 10,680 employees. The workers committee asked Mozes to respond to its demands, and hinted that if he rejects them, the workers committee might go on strike.
In a letter to employees, the workers committee wrote, "You don’t have to be General Patton to know that even the most distinguished and beribboned general cannot win a battle without troops alongside him, however lowly they may be. This is even more true in the case of senior executives whose promotion, both in the hierarchy and on the pay scale, depends totally on the production that you and we, the regular workers, succeed in producing, and our output, thank god, is priceless. To our regret, Israel Chemicals' board of directors has failed to realize this."
The workers committee also said, "We won't rest or shut up until all the directors open their eyes and see the injustice and cynicism of their decision to award bonuses (options) worth hundreds of millions of shekels to managers at a time when we, the regular workers, are unable to get the crumbs we deserve by right, not by charity. If there is no response to our appeal to CEO Mozes, we have no choice but to act as we see fit and in accordance with our rights, within the law of course, so that these decisions which hurt us are changed immediately. We do not lack for means of action."
Israel Chemicals' share fell 0.4% by midday today to NIS 52.20, giving a market cap of NIS 66.36 billion.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 13, 2010
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