Cuts to employee compensation and bonuses even though a company is profitable? It's completely normal these days. No matter what, employees' pockets are hit first. All it takes is the shareholder dividend not being as high as perhaps desired. Or whatever else — any flimsy excuse will do to take money from those who happen to be exactly the people who are supposed to be consuming. Of course they don't consume anymore. And suddenly the economy is complaining that sales are dropping, retail collectively goes bankrupt, and the next round of fleecing and cutting begins.
The fact that all of this is completely nonsensical and serves no purpose other than feeding the egos of stupid executives and lobbyists and filling the pockets of major shareholders apparently bothers hardly anyone. Even when these major shareholders themselves then lay off employees and cut compensation. Despite higher revenues.
And what's the end result? The companies go bankrupt anyway, because some managers would rather sell out their own employees for double-digit millions, or because stupid bosses hire even dumber management consultants to run a perfectly good company into the ground so that they finally have real reason to squeeze and fire employees. One last time...
The German economic location is run by stupidity, corruption, and arrogance. A lethal mix.
You can find the original article at tagesschau online at tagesschau im Internet.