Former Kodak employees who fear for their pensions and other benefits are urging a bankruptcy judge to think of them and not rubber-stamp $8.8 million in executive bonuses, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In letters filed to Kodak's bankruptcy docket yesterday, Richard Pignataro and Cecil D. Quillen Jr. said that it is not fair for Kodak to reward executives while they and other former Kodak workers face the risk that the company could seek to trim or modify their benefits. Kodak’s plan proposes to set aside $8.8 million in cash and deferred stock for 15 "key management employees," including nine executives, deemed "essential" to Kodak’s ability to successfully restructure. Pignataro, who says that he is a Kodak retiree, wrote that he was "outraged" to learn that Kodak Chief Executive Antonio Perez would "even ask to be included" among the bonus recipients "after he led the company into bankruptcy." Perez's expected bonus payment would be 200 percent of his base salary, according to Kodak. The CFO’s target bonus would be 178 percent of his salary, while the other managers’ bonuses would range from 16 to 206 percent of their salaries.
