About 44,000 General Motors employees will be eligible to receive $9,000 bonus checks as a result of the company’s profit-sharing agreement with United Auto Workers.
Lauren Langille, a spokeswoman for GM, confirmed the numbers to the Washington Examiner.
The UAW, which represents hourly workers at GM, has an agreement that for every $1 billion in annual earnings before taxes and interest that the company takes in, its workers will receive $1,000. In 2020, before taxes, the company took in more than $9 billion. In 2019, GM workers were paid $8,000, a decrease from their payments of $10,750 in 2018.
Ford, which has a similar agreement with its union-represented workers, will only be paying its factory employees $3,625 this year, compared to $6,600 last year.
In March, the company totally halted its North American vehicle production due to concerns over the coronavirus pandemic and instead began manufacturing ventilators to aid those suffering from severe cases of COVID-19. While it restarted its factories several weeks later, the company has faced consistent delays due to shortages in parts.
“Despite a year of a pandemic and loss of production in 2020, General Motors reported a solid profit for North America,” Terry Dittes, UAW vice president of the General Motors Department, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “This is a testament to our UAW-GM Membership, who produce some of the finest and most sought-after vehicles in the world, right here in the U.S.A.”
