NEW
YORK -- Companies should stop touting how they pay their employees and
executives based on performance if they're going to rewrite the rules
when times get tough.

Just look at the companies revamping their
compensation plans in ways that increase the chance for holders of
stock options to make a big windfall should the market turn around.

Some
like Google Inc. are repricing options so that they are now more in
line with today's depressed marketplace, while others such as SunTrust
Banks Inc. are doling out massive new grants at lower prices.

Even
though corporate performance has faltered, these can be potentially
sweet deals for workers -- ones that shareholders will never be offered.

"We
don't get to trade in our stock so why should they?" said Richard
Ferlauto, director of pension and benefits policy for the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a Washington-based
labor group representing government workers.

Investors like
Ferlauto plan to fight companies taking such action during this
spring's proxy season. As he points out, shareholders have to approve
such changes, and many investors this year aren't likely to turn a
blind eye to that fact.

That's because trillions of dollars in
shareholder wealth has evaporated in the past 17 months. Major stock
indexes are now worth about half their October 2007 record highs, and
shares trade at levels not seen in a decade.

Google announced Tuesday that it had repriced 7.64 million stock options

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