GM Bonuses for Salaried Employees Down, Most Still Far Exceed Those for Hourly

We posted earlier about the fact that many hourly employees at General Motors could enjoy five-figure bonuses this year, thanks in part to tweaks in the UAW agreement and a banner year for profits. Now, word has leaked about bonuses for the salaried. They may be down from last year – but many remain far higher than the ones paid to hourly employees. 

As a refresher, over 42,000 UAW employees at The General can expect a bonus check somewhere in the neighborhood of $12,750 when they look at their direct deposit slips later this month. This is a result of the company recording just under $10 billion dollars in earnings for the 2022 calendar year, plus the removal of a $12k cap on these types of bonuses. That change was apparently negotiated during the 2019 round of talks.

Meanwhile, some salaried personnel could be in for an even bigger payday. According to the Detroit Free Press who are citing the review of an internal memo, a senior-level manager making a $200,000 annual salary could net an eye-popping bonus of $75,840. Despite that outsized figure, it is apparently south of the $96,000 the same person could have theoretically gotten in 2021. It is estimated someone making 80 grand would be in line for a $12,600 payday; a person with a newly-minted salary right at six figures could see an extra $20,540.

Your author will take a moment to digest these numbers.

Bonuses for salaried workers, again according to that memo viewed by the Freep, are based on a ‘158 percent’ factor which is calculated as a derivative that factors in various GM-set annual performance targets. These targets are beyond simple earnings results, apparently. Last year, it is said that the same factor was ‘200 percent’, suggesting GM outstripped its own internal targets in 2021 to a greater degree than it did last year – even though public forward-facing numbers may have appeared to tell a different story. Since anyone blessed with the gift of basic numeracy knows that 158 is lower than 200, it’s logical to speculate that some salaried bonuses may be lower this year than last.

Again, these bonuses – for both salaried and hourly – are apparently possible thanks to company performance in 2022, which beat the expectations of Wall Street. Interestingly, bonuses for the salaried are apparently doled out at the discretion of a person’s manager, so it is suggested by those in the know that a person may not get the full bonus for which they are eligible if their performance is poor. Insiders say that is rare. The inverse goes for top performers, brown nosers, and teacher’s pets who stand to potentially get a bigger bonus than the one arrived at by the internal calculation.

[Image: The author]

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