"Your blood pressure is up from the time you check in until the time you leave," said Dave Miller, president of Local 10-901 of the United Steelworkers, which represents some Marcus Hook workers. His union cohort, Mike McLain, nodded in agreement: He was six months shy of his 50th birthday when Sunoco killed off the future-retiree health benefits for its under-50 workers.
But at least one Sunoco employee did all right by "Uncle Sunny" in 2010: its CEO, Lynn Elsenhans.
Elsenhans arrived at Sunoco in 2008 to carry out an aggressive program of cost-cutting. That apparently did not include her own compensation package - which rose last year by a staggering 524 percent, to more than $11.7 million.
Although last year's pay boost for the CEO of the Philadelphia-headquartered oil giant - in an era of salary and pension freezes for so many blue-collar workers - was certainly larger than most, it also highlights a surprising trend.
A Daily News survey of 51 CEOs of publicly traded companies in Philadelphia and its nearby Pennsylvania suburbs - firms in which the leadership didn't change and have reported their 2010 data - found that their average pay raise last year was a whopping 32.6 percent.
Not that Philly's CEOs were hurting in 2009, when their average compensation was more than $3.38 million. But, last year the typical top boss got a raise that topped $1 million, to more than $4.48 million.
Their pay hikes on steroids - including bonuses and other things that you probably didn't get, like stock and pension benefits, on top of base salary - is more than 10 times higher than the average American worker's raise of just 2.7 percent.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that average CEO raises nationally were 23 percent - meaning that Philadelphia is slightly ahead of the curve.
