How about if they take a cut proportinal to everyone else?
I'm not sure whether you understood the article.
"Everyone else" is not taking a pay cut. Rather, a group of 7,600 employees out of the approximately 125,000 IBM employees in the United States is having their base pay reduced by 15%, however they are now eligible to earn overtime pay on top of that base pay, whereas previously they were not eligible for overtime. As a result, some of the employees in that group will see an increase in their total compensation, and potentially a very large increase. Some will see little or no change. Others may see a decrease in their total compensation, which could be as much as 15% of their previous base salary, or it could be less of a decrease depending on individual circumstances.
It's not clear from the article whether the 7,600 employees whose base pay is being cut are "Systems Engineers" in the marketing division or some other job category. If indeed they are "Systems Engineers", then my experience during the seven or eight years when I was an IBM Systems Engineer was that they were not eligible for overtime pay, however it was normal for the compensation plan for Systems Engineers (as well as that for Marketing Reps) to be reset at the beginning of the year - and from time to time that total compensation plan has been tweaked to include more or less salary risk for the employees along with a corresponding potential upside opportunity available upon meeting certain business targets, bonuses, awards, etc. The description provided in this article sounds somewhat similar. If this group of employees does not consist of Systems Engineers, however, then I am not familiar with the details of their past compensation plans.
Regardless of whether or not they are Systems Engineers, the upshot is that some will earn more, some will not see much or any change, and others will see a decrease in their earnings. So your basic premise and your apparent unhappiness at the fact that the CEO and VPs are not going to see a cut in their own pay is both illogical and a total non-sequitur.