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Servus CEO’s bonus outrageous

As I picked up the Advocate on Saturday, I was for a lack of words, appalled at the content of an article about the Servus CEO stepping down.

As I picked up the Advocate on Saturday, I was for a lack of words, appalled at the content of an article about the Servus CEO stepping down.

What a fancy step that must be for Steve Blakely to walk away with the $4.1 million he was paid in 2008, including a $3.6-million bonus, after leading a merger of Red Deer-based Community Savings and Lloydminster-based Common Wealth Credit Union.

I’m sure I’m not the only one whose jaw dropped. After talking to several other members, I found that they too, had no knowledge of this deal and were just as shocked as I was.

Here I am, a member of the credit union, bragging about how great the organization is — nothing like the mainline banks, who pay out big bonuses to their CEOs. How wrong I was!

We are told that Blakely led the merger of the Red Deer and Lloydminster credit unions. Was that such a big job? Surely there would be others just as qualified as he was who could have done the job. It was certainly not a forced issue.

Servus board chairman Bill Anhorn defended the payment, saying that with the merger Blakely could have lost his job.

So! There are many in our society, past and present, who have lost their jobs for no fault of their own and they simply “picked themselves up and started all over again.”

You know, this sounds very similar to the scenario regarding the payout to the head of the DTHR, who got a real fancy settlement when his job was eliminated. Certainly, many disagreed with this “arrangement.”

Please tell me what has happened to the days when men and women went to work, took on the task at hand, at their regular salary and didn’t expect a bonus just because they did a good job?

Doing a good job, whatever it entailed, was part of the work ethic we were brought up with.

Richard Duffin

Red Deer