Union objects to Tribune plan to pay bonuses

Tribune Co., the newspaper publisher driven to bankruptcy last year by high debt and falling advertising sales, should be barred from paying $69.9 million in bonuses to hundreds of managers, three unions told a judge.

The groups challenged the Chicago-based company's claim that paying bonuses to more than 720 executives this year would help encourage productivity, according to objections filed yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware.

Tribune can't justify paying bonuses to executives "while simultaneously pleading financial difficulties to the lower level workers who report and write the stories, sell the ads, produce the papers and handle the broadcasts," the Washington- Baltimore Newspaper Guild said in a filing. The union represents 225 Tribune workers, it said.

Tribune, owner of the Baltimore Sun, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Cubs baseball team, filed for bankruptcy in December. The company won bankruptcy court approval this year to pay delayed management bonuses of $13.4 million for performance last year, the unions said.

Tribune's top ten executives would get about $2 million each under the plan, while 29 additional "key" executives would split $15.7 million, according to the objection. Almost 700 managers would get an average of $47,426 each, the union said.

Tribune's lawyer, Bryan Krakauer of Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

The case is In re Tribune Co., 08-13141, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington).