There was an eye-opening package of stories about CEO pay on Friday in The New York Times. I was traveling so I didn’t have a chance to read all of it. But as a UAW member, this one did jump put:

The Ford Motor Company paid its new chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, $28.18 million in his first four months on the job, the automaker said in a regulatory filing yesterday.

His compensation included an $18.5 million bonus that Ford, which reported a record $12.7 billion loss last year, disclosed in September when it hired him from Boeing.

Figures in Ford’s annual proxy statement show that his pay was more than three times that of any other executive at the company. That includes the executive chairman, William Clay Ford, Jr., who has kept a 2005 promise not to accept any new salary, bonus or stock awards until Ford consistently earns a profit.

Great approach: company losing billions but pays CEO millions…do we live in a great country or what?