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June 12, 2008 5:20 PM PDT -- United Airlines said Thursday that it would begin charging $15 for the first piece of checked luggage, becoming the second major airline to impose a fee for a service that long has been included in the air fare.

The luggage charge for coach-class passengers on the nation's second-largest carrier was quickly matched by US Airways, raising the prospects that the remaining big carriers, Delta Air Lines and Continental Airlines, would soon follow.

Southwest Airlines is the only carrier that has publicly balked at -- and ridiculed -- the fee.

American Airlines, the nation's largest carrier, initiated the controversial charge last month, citing the need to generate extra revenue to help offset the fast-rising price of fuel.

American will begin imposing the fee for domestic tickets purchased beginning Sunday. United's fee will apply to tickets purchased starting today for travel on or after Aug. 18 while US Air said its fee would start in July.

Meanwhile, about 100 United Airlines pilots, flight attendants and machinists protested at the carrier's annual shareholders' meeting today in Woodland Hills. They decried the way senior executives were managing the airline, saying it has led to poor employee morale.

United, also the second-largest carrier at Los Angeles International Airport, has one of the worst on-time records of any major carrier and often ranks among the lowest in consumer satisfaction surveys.

Several union leaders said the airline's service had suffered because employees were upset, particularly at a decision approved today to set aside stock worth about $130 million to fund a new incentive plan for executives just as the airline announced plans to slash its payroll by up to 1,600 workers. Last week, the airline said it would ground 100 planes to cope with mounting losses from escalating fuel expenses.

"The management's mantra has been 'shared sacrifice, shared rewards.' We've sacrificed, but it seems executives are the only one getting the rewards," said Todd Daniels, a United pilot for 18 years and co-chairman of communications for the Air Line Pilots Assn..

A United spokeswoman said the incentives for upper management personnel were needed to help the airline "attract, retain and reward exceptional senior leaders."

But Daniels said pay and benefits for pilots had been slashed by half since 2003, just before the airline filed for bankruptcy. United pilots gave up a total of $1.4 billion in compensation during the bankruptcy reorganization to keep the airline from going out of business, he said.

To illustrate their grievance, the protesters inflated a 15-foot-tall black rat holding two large bags of money in a park across the street from the hotel where the meeting was being held.

United workers also held up signs saying "Glenn's gotta go," a reference to chief executive Glenn Tilton, at the entrance to the meeting at the Marriott in Warner Center.

Tensions between senior managers and the airline's union have grown in recent weeks, particularly after two top executives of rival Continental announced last week that they would forgo pay for the rest of this year because of the workforce cuts that the airline was forced to make amid the rapid jump in fuel expenses.

The pilots' union questioned United's decision to hold its annual meeting far from its headquarters in Chicago, where protesters disrupted last year's meeting. United spokeswoman Jean Medina said the airline chose a Southern California location because it could not find a place in Chicago.

"One can conjecture as to why they would move a meeting of a Chicago company to Woodland Hills, but one can guess that they didn't want a repeat of last year," Daniels said.

Separately today, Continental said it would pull out of 15 cities around the world as part of its previously announced plan to slash operations. Among the cities that Continental will stop serving are Palm Spring, Oakland and Reno..

No cuts in service are planned for LAX where Continental operates 23 departures a days, most of them to Houston and Newark, N.J.

Another major carrier, Tempe, Ariz-based US Airways said it would eliminate 1,700 jobs and slash domestic seating capacity by as much as 8% by year's end.

Speaking at United's shareholders meeting, which at times included testy exchanges between Tilton and dozens of airline workers, Tilton defended the executive incentive plan and called escalating fuel prices a "game changer" for the industry.

"The magnitude of the current economic reality requires action far greater than any one in the industry could have anticipated just a few months ago," he said.

peter.pae@latimes.com