GM Seeks to Double Chairman’s Pension : Compensation: Directors will vote on increasing from $550,000 to $1.1 million a year the pension for Roger Smith, whose company lost 11 percentage points in market share during his leadership.

The General Motors Corp. board of directors will be asked to double the pension for retiring Chairman Roger Smith, whose company lost 11 percentage points in market share during his leadership, it was reported today.

The Dayton Daily News, in a copyright article, said the new plan would increase Smith’s pension from $550,000 to $1.1 million a year.

The company’s board of directors said the retirement plan for top GM executives is noncompetitive and shortchanges them.

Union officials at GM plants in the Dayton area greeted the bid for higher executive pensions coolly and said it may complicate coming negotiations between the United Auto Workers union and the Big Three car makers.

The current executive retirement plan for Smith, who will step down July 31, bases his pension on his salary. The company’s proxy statement, which recently went out to GM shareholders, said the revised plan would compute pensions by combining salaries, bonuses and stock awards.

Proxies list issues on which shareholders vote. Results of the vote will be announced at GM’s annual meeting May 25 in Detroit.

“The (current) retirement benefits are extremely uncompetitive,” company spokesman Terrence Sullivan said, explaining that the company needs higher executive pensions to attract and retain top-level managers.

The proxy says GM’s board of directors studied other companies’ retirement plans and requested the increase for GM officers after finding that their current pensions ranked in the bottom 21%.

Sullivan said he does not know which companies the directors surveyed.

The plan for a hefty pension boost got little sympathy from UAW spokesman Frank Joyce.

“We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. All of the Big Three need to be restraining already excessive executive compensation instead of trying to keep up with the Joneses,” he said.

Joe Hasenjager, president of UAW Local 696, encouraged shareholders to vote against the issue, saying, “I don’t think anyone is worth $1.1 million for retirement.”

“I don’t feel Roger Smith has done any favors for GM,” said Mike Fisher, president of Local 755 of the International Union of Electronic Workers. “I voted against it.”

Since Smith took over in 1981, GM’s U.S. market share has dropped 11 points to 34.7% last year.