Offer Incentives to All, Not Just to Executives

It is indeed propitious that the article, “Chairman Faces Immense Task in Reshaping IBM,” (June 2), follows on the heels of your series of articles on top U.S. executives and their purported pay for performance.

The top 100 executives each earned more than $1 million last year, with most of them getting at least half of that through some form of bonus plan.

IBM’s critics, that includes financial analysts, seem to believe that only by threatening and then executing the big stick of layoffs will that firm’s, or indeed any company’s, performance be improved. The old shibboleth prevails that cutting costs by cutting workers is the panacea. Except in Japan.

Why not take a step forward and offer the same kinds of monetary rewards to all employees that the top executives get: bonuses equal to their salaries if their performance and the company’s improves.

I think everyone would notice at how hard $15,000 secretaries and $50,000 engineers, and indeed every employee, would work to earn an annual bonus equal to their present wages.

The stockholders, which include those top executives, might be surprised at how much money this increased productivity would generate.

MAURICE GARNHOLZ, Manhattan Beach