Lucent to give bonus to all workers

PHILADELPHIA: Telecommunications equipment maker Lucent Technologies Inc. said it would give performance-based bonuses to all managers and rank-and-file workers after recently posting its first profit in more than three years.

Except for a bonus paid to Chairman Patricia Russo last year, the company's top 30 executives had been excluded from incentive-based bonuses since 1999. All other employees received small bonuses in 2002 and 2001, and none in 2000.

Russo received $37.7 million in salary, bonus, long-term compensation, such as stock options and other incentives, in 2002 under the terms of her hiring agreement, according to data compiled by Equilar Inc. Her compensation totaled $6.6 million in 2003, the company said.

For fiscal 2003, which ended September 30, about 30,000 Lucent workers will receive roughly 90 percent of their potential bonus target since the company met its operating income objectives for the year, a spokesman said.

Lucent's 4,500 union workers will receive incentive awards as outlined in their labor contracts, the company said. The union employees have received such payouts every year since 1998.

The 2003 bonuses will be paid in December. The Murray Hill, New Jersey-based company declined to comment on the total cost of the payout.

The company, which endured a massive restructuring that slashed employment by 78 percent from its peak of 157,000 in July 2000, posted a fiscal fourth-quarter profit, including preferred dividend payments, of $77 million, compared with a loss in the year-earlier quarter of $2.88 billion.

Lucent had posted about $30 billion in losses in the past three years. The company restructured by spinning off its corporate business and chips units -- now Avaya Inc. and Agere Systems Inc., respectively -- and sold its fiber cable operations and several other plants.

(C) Reuters