Patriot Coal Corp. can pay $6.9 million in bonuses to key employees, a judge said, rejecting union claims that the payments wrongly benefit corporate insiders, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge Kathy A. Surratt-States yesterday granted the company’s request to pay 274 people under two bonus plans. Patriot said that the money would give managers an incentive to improve the company’s performance and stay through its chapter 11 reorganization. The United Mine Workers of America, which represents 42 percent of Patriot’s workforce, objected, calling the payments “massive bonuses to corporate insiders” at a time when the company is seeking concessions from regular employees and claiming it faces a liquidity crisis. The company’s top 35 officers, who make up 13 percent of the bonus plan participants by number, will get 42 percent of one payment plan by amount and 61 percent of the other, the union said.
