04/25/2003 - Updated 02:14 PM ET Northwest flight attendants attack executives' pay NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Northwest Airlines flight attendants on Friday blasted the carrier's top executives for accepting hefty compensation packages while some attendants have been laid off as the airline's losses mount. At a sometimes confrontational annual meeting, the No. 4 U.S. airline defended executives' compensation, a hot-button topic at many carriers, most notably at American Airlines Inc. Northwest's flight attendants, who protested outside the meeting in Manhattan, asked management to rescind bonuses and pare or eliminate stock option awards. "What this dialogue today was about was, are we really all in this together, or once again are we expected to take cuts while making executives very rich," said Mollie Reiley, an official of Teamsters union Local 2000, which represents Northwest's attendants. "No one's interested in doing that, quite frankly. Our members would rather go into bankruptcy." American's failure to disclose executive bonuses and pensions while extracting $1.8 billion of employee concessions outraged its unions and led on Thursday to the resignation of Chief Executive Donald Carty. Northwest executives parried concerns that the airline might seek bankruptcy protection, following the lead of UAL Corp.'s United Airlines Inc. and US Airways Group Inc., as war, terrorism fears, security hassles and the SARS virus crimp travel. American, a unit of AMR Corp., on Friday appeared for now to have skirted its own Chapter 11 filing by winning concessions from its unions. "I'm not going to sit here and say we're going to file for bankruptcy," said Chairman Gary Wilson. He added, however: "If we're not cost competitive, we can't survive." Northwest shareholders rejected a proposal to force management to submit for shareholder approval any anti-takeover "poison pill," such as share issuance that might cause the value of existing shareholders' stakes to fall. The proposal received a preliminary 44 percent of the votes tallied. MANAGEMENT CONCESSIONS Chief Executive Richard Anderson said in an interview the carrier's management is prepared to share in cost cuts. Anderson's 2002 compensation totaled about $2.8 million, including a $500,000 salary and $250,000 bonus, Northwest's proxy filing showed. That's below the eight-figure packages commanded by Delta Air Lines Inc. CEO Leo Mullin and Continental Airlines Inc. CEO Gordon Bethune, but above that of US Airways Group Inc.'s CEO David Siegel. "We've dealt responsibly with all the areas of executive compensation ... by any objective measure," he said. "Everybody will have a shared sacrifice, and that sacrifice needs to be more heavily weighted toward people that make more." The flight attendants aren't all convinced. "We're all working short crew, we're working longer days, and he all wants us to do it for less money," said Josh Zivick, 32, who has for five years worked for Northwest. "It's not going to happen." Northwest posted a $396 million first quarter net loss, or $4.62 per share. In March it cut its schedule and announced 4,900 job cuts because of the Iraq war. It finished the quarter with $2.3 billion of cash, more than at AMR and UAL. Anderson said Northwest's code-share alliance with No. 3 rival Delta and No. 5 Continental, which experts said might net each carrier $200 million, might get under way this year. Northwest shares traded Friday afternoon on the Nasdaq at $7.43, down 6 cents. They closed one year ago at $19.11. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.pscutt.com TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************