Paid Time Off MattersA (slow) progress report

How trustworthy is Lionbridge Technologies?

CEO Rory Cowan loves the fact that Lionbridge Technologies has been selected by Forbes magazine to be for the second consecutive year among its list of the 100  most trustworthy companies in America. He says that "For nearly two decades, we've provided our clients, employees, partners and shareholders with the highest level of transparency, integrity and quality." How does he reconcile this glowing statement with his refusal, after we gave more than 3 years of excellent work to Lionbridge and Microsoft, to provide us with any paid time off nor any pay increase? 

Paid Time Off Matters as a Business School Case Study

Business Schools (like Harvard) love case studies. We thought it would be interesting to create a case study about the implementation by Lionbridge Technologies  (whose CEO is Rory Cowan) of Microsoft's requirement to provide paid leaves to its employees. We also included ourselves (Temporary Workers of America) as a party as there is an on going collective bargaining negociation going on. This case study is free. Just contact us to get the word format document with the elements of the case and send us your recommandations. This is part of our effort to crowdsource innovative solutions to this situation. As there is legal component with the writing of the collective bargaining contract this case can also be of interest for Law Schools.

contact: temporaryworkersofamercia at gmail.com

Comparing paychecks with CEOs

Comparing paychecks with CEOs is the title of an article by Gretchen Morgenson in this sunday edition of the New York Times. 

We asked what was Rory Cowan's (Lionbridge CEO) annual compensation in one of our 'request for information'. The answer provided in January 2015 was $1.522.275 (for his 2014 cash compensation). Reading this article published on March 24 in the Boston Business Journal it looks like Rory Cowan took home a bit more: $2.89 million. That's $1.36 million more than what we were told. Paid $22 per hour since December 2011, I received from Lionbridge for 2014, a total of $40.810, for a net of $32.618.

If we estimate the maximum aggregated annual income for all 37 Tier 1 employees at the present rate it's less than Rory Cowan's annual compensation: $1.248.960 vs $1.522.275 or $2.89 million.
Rory Cowan's representatives at the bargaining table have (until now) refused any pay raise (there has never been a pay raise since the start of the project in December 2011) and have also rejected any type of paid leave. We are therefore curious to see how they'll respond to Microsoft's new requirement to provide at least 15 days of paid leave.

Lionbridge FY 2014, 2013, 2012 results

Results 2014

 

Results 2013

Results 2012 

Details below. We found particularly interesting the data concerning Lionbridge's "share repurchase program":

2014: $5.9 million  2013: $5.2 million  2013: $18 million

Total share repurchase program for the 3 years: $29.1 million