SiliconBeat

For those of you wondering about that green meat being served today in your company cafeterias, here’s a newsflash. It’s St. Patrick’s Day, which is why SiliconBeat is bringing you this item.

The San Jose-Dublin Sister City Program has presented its 2009 Spirit of Ireland Award to none other than T. J. Rodgers, chief executive officer of San Jose chip-maker Cypress Semiconductor.

What earned him this honor? Here’s how the company’s press release put it:

“Rodgers was instrumental in founding Cypress’s Irish Design Center in Blackrock, Cork, in an effort to establish closer ties with one of the most significant pools of semiconductor design talent outside Silicon Valley. Rodgers and Cypress have also made a commitment to hiring from Irish universities: Over 80% of the Cork staff has graduated from Irish schools, including the University College Cork.”

So there you have it. Oh by the way, if that green meat is still being served next week, you might want to order something else.

While Sunnyvale computer-chipmaker Spansion this week stirred outrage by firing 3,000 workers and then boosting some executives’ pay, Cypress Semiconductor responded to the economic slowdown a little differently.

The San Jose-based Cypress cut its top executives’  2009 salaries along with that of its other employees,.according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That included trimming the pay of Chief Executive T. J. Rodgers.

Rodgers and his top managers will have their base salaries slashed on a sliding scale ranging from 9 percent to 11 percent. Plus, they won’t get an annual bonus for 2008 and will forfeit the fourth-quarter bonus the company typically hands out when times are good.

Cypress spokesman Joseph McCarthy wouldn’t disclose the size of the pay cut for the company’s rank and file, but said it was less than for the top honchos.

“It’s a democratic salary cut,” McCarthy noted. “This is tough on all of us.”