SOUTHFIELD, MICH. - General Motors said Monday it expects to give unionized U.S. hourly employees profit-sharing checks averaging at least $4,000 as it prepares to negotiate a labor contract this year.
The payout is more than double the previous record for bonuses paid to GM's hourly workers, the Detroit-based company said Monday in an e-mailed statement. GM said the previous record for its hourly workers' checks was an average $1,775 in 1999.
GM, Ford and Chrysler are preparing for contract talks this year with the United Auto Workers as the union seeks a share of the industry's prosperity. GM, which earned $4.77 billion in the first three quarters last year, wants to avoid "lockstep" annual raises to all employees and instead pay bonuses tied to profitability, said Logan Robinson, a law professor at the University of Detroit Mercy.
"A nice fat check will make the workers sympathetic to a plan like that," said Robinson, also a former general counsel at auto-parts maker Delphi Corp.
The exact payout for GM's 45,000 eligible employees will be disclosed during the company's earnings release in late February, the automaker said.
The payouts to union workers are "a good example of how we are sharing in the success" of GM, the company and the UAW said in a joint letter distributed to the automaker's plants.
About 96 percent of GM's 28,000 salaried workers have a target bonus range that's 4 percent to 16 percent of annual salary, GM said Monday. Less than 1 percent of its managers had target bonuses of at least half of their salary, GM said.
Because GM exceeded its targets for operating cash flow, earnings before interest and taxes, and global market share, the actual bonuses may be 1.45 times the employees' targeted ranges, GM said. That means bonuses for top performers may exceed 72 percent of their salary, according to the statement.
