Target Screws Fired Canadian Workers, CEO Only Gets $61 Million

As you may have heard, Target will soon be closing all 133 of its stores in Canada, probably because they won't allow Americans with guns to march around with their assault rifles. [contextly_sidebar id="RVny3plFJDfucJW9p9LpcU5xStvU5fTV"]

Or maybe, if you believe "business journalism," it's because Target expanded too quickly and had constant problems getting enough merchandise to many of the new Canadian stores, as Slate had no end of fun showing us:

 
 Images by Belus Capital Advisors

It was apparently a multi-factor fuck-tussle of bad management and terrible planning. And so of course, the CEO who oversaw the growing debacle, Gregg Steinhafel, was canned last May as it was becoming clear what a mess the Canadian expansion was. Plus, there was also that incredibly costly data breach during the 2013 holiday season that affected 70 million American customers. After helping Target lose billions, Steinhafel walked away with a ginormous compensation package, as is only right and just in such circumstances, because he undoubtedly had some good qualities too.

Just how ginormous? Fortune Magazine estimated Steinhafel's total compensation at about $61 million, which includes severance of $15.9 million. That's some parachute, that golden one.

Funny thing about that total: It's also roughly equivalent to the "employee trust" package that Target announced for all 17,600 of its soon-to-be-jobless Canadian workers. Those workers get to share a generous $70 million Canadian (approximately12 cents$56 million U.S.), which is supposed to cover approximately 16 weeks of pay per worker. For those of you who are bad at math, that's about $3181 per worker. And really, who wouldn't be able to live on that? Maybe if Canada would just had the good sense to become a right-to-work state, Target would be free even of that burden. We bet that if this happened in South Carolina, the company could have charged the laid-off workers a restocking fee for all those red polo shirts.

Come to think of it, it's probably a really good idea that Canada has gun control.

[ CBC via Daily Kos ]