Transport Workers Union protests American Airlines execs' bonuses (union tea protest?)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/041509dnbusamericanprotest.3a0e8e5.html

07:34 AM CDT on Wednesday, April 15, 2009
By TERRY MAXON / The Dallas Morning News
[e-mail]

This year's stock payout to American Airlines Inc. executives may be the smallest this decade, but size didn't matter to several hundred Transport Workers Union members protesting Tuesday outside the airline's headquarters.

John Conley, director of TWU's air transport division, said the issue isn't that the payout likely will be relatively minor, but the fact that the executives and other key employees are getting anything at all.

"Minor compared to what these folks are getting?" Conley said, nodding to the several hundred employees who attended Tuesday's demonstration. "They are going to receive something."

The stock comes from parent AMR Corp.'s annual "performance stock plan," which gives shares to about 800 to 1,000 employees based on how the shares performed for the previous three years vs. other airlines' shares. The plan vests today, with the stock to be distributed in coming days.
Jeff Brundage, American's senior vice president of human resources, defended AMR's compensation plans that tie much of executive remuneration to the value of AMR shares.

For the 2009 payout, "that portion that is in stock is much smaller than was intended," Brundage said. "But that's the way the program was intended to work."

Although American does not disclose the value of the stock handed out each year, the unions have estimated that it totaled nearly $300 million for 2006, 2007 and 2008.

$300 million 'checks'

FULL story and video at link.