Solyndra's in deep enough, so what's a half million dollars more, right? It seems Obama's notorious pet project -- the future of green energy! -- has now resorted to bribing employees to finish their jobs. To prevent mass exodus of employees before Chapter 11 restructuring has completed, the failed solar panel manufacturer is awarding five-figure bonuses to workers deemed critical to the efforts.
Nearly two dozen Solyndra employees could receive bonuses ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 each under a proposal filed by Solyndra’s attorneys in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
The attorneys say the extra money will add motivation at a time when workers at the solar company have little job security and more responsibilities because so many of their colleagues have been fired.
The names of the bonus-eligible employees are not disclosed in the court filings that outline the bonus proposal. None of the employees is among the so-called corporate “insiders” — top officers or members of the board of directors, records show.
The proposed bonus recipients include nine equipment engineers, six general business and finance employees and up to two information technology workers.
The biggest bonus, for $50,000, would go to a Solyndra employee whose job title is listed as a senior director with a base salary of $206,499 per year. Two senior managers stand to receive bonuses of $30,000 and $32,500.
Bankruptcy attorneys said the so-called “key employee incentive plan” aims to keep important personnel from leaving the company.
The attorneys argued that the extra bonus money — ranging from 8 percent to 30 percent of the employees’ total base annual salaries — “will motivate the eligible employees to work as hard as possible” to achieve a Chapter 11 restructuring plan and sale.
Of course, we certainly won't be seeing busloads of protesters at these employees houses, as we did when the left was outraged over bonuses given in the banking industry after the 2008 collapse. Granted, the situations aren't entirely analagous, but it's certainly not easy to stomach five-figure bonuses for employees of a company that went broke on the taxpayers' dime.