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发帖数: 8175 | 1 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110214/ap_on_re_us/us_general_moto
DETROIT – General Motors Co. will pay more than $189 million in profit-
sharing to 48,000 U.S. hourly workers and millions more in performance
bonuses to salaried employees, according to company documents obtained by
The Associated Press.
GM will pay most hourly workers more than $4,000 each as compensation for
its strong financial performance last year, said a person briefed on the
bonuses. The payments come less than two years after the automaker emerged
from bankruptcy protection with the help of a huge government bailout. They'
re more than double the previous record payment of $1,775 in 1999, at the
height of the boom in sales of sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.
"On the whole, we made tremendous progress last year," CEO and Chairman Dan
Akerson said in an e-mail message to employees announcing the payments on
Monday. "With our collective teamwork, this can be just the beginning."
GM's 28,000 salaried workers, such as engineers and managers, will get
bonuses equal to 4 to 16 percent of their base pay. Fewer than 1 percent
will get 50 percent or more; another 3 percent will get from 16 percent to
around 50 percent, the person said. GM is not giving annual pay raises.
GM made $4.2 billion in the first nine months of 2010 and is expected to
soon announce a fourth-quarter profit. The company needed a $49.5 billion
government bailout to survive a mid-2009 bankruptcy filing, and the
government still owns 25 percent of GM's stock. Chrysler, which needed a $12
.5 billion bailout, plans to pay bonuses as well. The government owns about
9 percent of Chrysler stock.
The payments were condemned by a leading critic of the industry bailout in
Congress.
"Since the taxpayers helped these companies out of bankruptcy, the taxpayers
should be repaid before bonuses go out," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa,
said in a statement. "It sends a message that those in charge take
shareholders, in this case the taxpayers, for a sucker."
Final numbers for the bonuses won't be calculated until after GM announces
its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings, said the person briefed on the
bonuses, who asked not to be identified because the numbers have not been
made public.
The 45,000 hourly workers at GM's factories will get more than $4,000.
Another 3,000 workers at four factories that GM took back from Delphi Corp.
will get around $3,000, the person said. GM is trying to sell the old Delphi
facilities in Kokomo, Ind.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Rochester, N.Y.; and
Lockport, N.Y.
The person briefed on the payments did not know the total cost of the
salaried bonuses, but it's likely to top $200 million. Most GM salaried
workers make more than $100,000. A bonus of 8 percent, the midpoint of the
range, would give them roughly $8,000. That means GM would pay out roughly $
224 million.
Bonuses for white-collar workers rise with the level of responsibility and
are based on the performance of the worker and the company, the person said.
The size of the white-collar bonuses could become an issue later this year
when the Detroit Three begin contract talks with the United Auto Workers
union. The master contract with all three companies expires in September.
The payments follow GM's surprising return to profitability last year. The
company emerged from bankruptcy cleansed of most of its debt and burdensome
contracts. Union concessions cut labor costs and helped the company make
money even at historically low sales volumes. Buyers bought only 11.6
million cars and trucks in the U.S. last year, far below the peak of 17
million in the middle of the last decade.
The GM documents say the white-collar bonuses are based on operating cash
flow, earnings before interest and taxes, and global market share. This year
, the company plans to add vehicle quality to the formula, measured by
warranty claims and outside rankings from Consumer Reports magazine and J.D.
Power and Associates, the person said.
GM has said its top 100 earners are still covered under government pay
restrictions. Cash salaries have been capped at $500,000, but further
compensation can be made in stock. Many of the executives still will take
home more than $1 million.
Chrysler's roughly 22,000 blue-collar workers were to get $750 in bonuses
even though the company lost $652 million last year. It expects to post a
net profit this year after revamping its aging model lineup. Chrysler
salaried workers also were to get bonuses, despite a $12.5 billion
government bailout.
GM's other Detroit-area competitor, Ford Motor Co., plans to pay its 40,600
U.S. factory workers a bonus of $5,000 each, the first such checks since
1999. The Dearborn, Mich., company, which avoided bankruptcy and did not get
a government bailout, made $6.6 billion last year. It also plans to pay
performance bonuses to white-collar workers, but it would not reveal the
amounts.
Last month, Akerson said that GM would not give white-collar raises but
would give bonuses tied to company performance. GM, he said, used to give
annual raises all the time.
"Three percent times five years in a row is 15 percent added to your cost
structure," he said. "All of the sudden you're starting to really narrow the
possibilities and flexibility of any reaction to a downturn. It's very
difficult to overcome," he said.
____
Associated Press Writer Ken Thomas in Washington, D.C., contributed to this
report |
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