As labor talks between American Airlines Inc. and its pilots continue, the issue of executive compensation is coming into play: Pilots are angry about 21 million dollars in stock that will be paid to the company's top 5 executives in April, and are using it as a bargaining chip to avoid further concessions.

The flight attendant's union is also upset with the bonuses, and according to Tommie Hutto-Blake, president of the flight attendants' union at American, "How do I keep my people pumped up" to offer good service when flight attendants are angry about their reduced pay and management's bonuses?"

While it's certainly tempting to accuse management of hypocrisy in paying big bonuses while attempting to slash the pay for rank and file workers, it looks overblown to me. American Airlines is the only major airline that has never filed for bankruptcy, and its workers are higher-paid than any other airline, with the exception of Southwest. The company's management, who have kept the company afloat while Delta Airlines and others have filed for bankruptcy deserve their pay packages, which are relatively tame compared to what executives in other industries earn.

I'm as much of a critic of high executive pay as anyone, but the unions appear to be using executive bonuses as a red herring here.

American Airlines pilots angry over executive bonuses originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 27 Mar 2007 17:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.