It says his compensation is largely tied to company stock performance. He is not guaranteed all of that money. He and the company have to perform.
It's not hard to play this game, if your incentive is to make the stock price go up.
Slash and burn.
"We made a profit" is never an excuse for unethical/immoral business dealings.
I think this is a very simplistic view.
I don't know enough about this particular case with GE, but sometimes layoffs are absolutely required for a business to continue existing, especially when the economic cycle dips a bit low. This is almost an absolute for smaller businesses.
For these cases, what do you suggest? Close the doors, laying off all workers, or lay off some, allowing the rest of the workers to continue their employment?
Something like "Sorry, you're all out of work because we don't want to lay off some of you" seems a bit self destructive, with a much more negative result.
What? According to google finance, the stock closed $8.57 last Friday, opened $8.55 today, reached an intra-day high of $8.65, and closed at $8.56. There's no way you can say that it was up 3%.
Less supply of your stock plus a deep pocketed purchaser? It's bonus time!