Union protests American's bonus pay

FORT WORTH, Texas, April 15 (UPI) -- Members of the Transport Workers Union staged an angry protest outside the Fort Worth, Texas, American Airlines headquarters to protest executive bonus pay.

The demonstration included several hundred workers who burned large fake checks and chanted "cancel executive checks," the Fort Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram reported Wednesday.

In 2003, union workers accepted a 26 percent cut in pay to help keep the airline from falling into bankruptcy, the newspaper said.

This year, bonus checks scheduled to be paid out this week to about 1,000 executives were notably smaller than a year ago. Chief Executive Officer Gerard Arpey was scheduled to receive about $300,000, compared to his 2008 bonus of $1.7 million.

Still, union leader John Conley said, "they've taken a select group and given them a reward that the rest of us don't have any access to."

Even this year's bonus pay, while union workers are accepting reductions, "sounds like a lot of money to me," he said.