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GM Pays CEO $21.9M Amid Trump, Biden Attacks Over Plant Closures, Job Cuts

JT Crowe
Mary Barra GM UAW no-confidence vote

Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on much these days.

One place they actually do see eye to eye: They’re sick and tired of General Motors and GM closing plants and slashing jobs, all while paying its CEO, Mary Barra, nearly $22 million dollars a year — and that’s after a pay cut in 2018 — after receiving taxpayer-funded bailouts to the tune of $11.2 billion during the Great Recession.

According to Bloomberg, Barra took a 0.4% pay cut in 2018, dropping her yearly pay $87,598 to a measly $21.9 million for the year, according to GM’s proxy filing.

Portions of her salary are linked to GM’s performance, which shrank a bit as the company’s $11.8 billion in adjusted earnings before interest and taxes fell slightly after record profits in 2016 and 2017.

GM announced in November that it was closing four U.S. factories and another in Canada by the end of this year, cutting thousands of salaried jobs due to declining sedan sales. The company is ramping up to begin development of electric and self-driving cars.

The cuts have drawn the attention to two potential 2020 election foes: President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Per Bloomberg:

Trump attacked Barra by name within hours of the announcement. He’s kept up the criticism of her and the company this year on Twitter and at rallies in Ohio and Michigan, the location of three of the factories and states that were crucial to his victory in 2016.

Biden, whose father, grandfather and uncle all worked at a GM plant in Delaware that shut down in 2009, criticized the company in a speech to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers earlier this month. He said he “couldn’t remain silent” because he was both blamed and credited for bailing out the carmaker as Barack Obama’s vice president.

“There used to be a basic bargain in America — you guys know it better than anybody — it said that if you’re a part of building the success of an enterprise, you got to share in the benefits,” Biden said on April 5. “Not now. If an enterprise is hit hard, it used to be everybody took a hit: the CEO, the managers, the hourly workers.”

GM said in February it would make profit-sharing payments of as much as $10,750 to more than 46,000 U.S. hourly workers. Since 2010, certain eligible employees have collected more than $80,500 in profit-sharing checks as a condition of contracts with the United Auto Workers union, which will bargain for a new agreement with the company later this year.

Barra earned 281 times more in compensation last year than the company’s median employee.

Separately in its annual proxy filing, GM said that lead director Tim Solso will remain on the board for one more year. He and directors Mike Mullen and Jim Mulva, who are leaving, are all 72, the board’s retirement age.

With Mulva and Mullen departing, GM will have an 11-member board that is majority women for the first time. Barra is among the company’s six female directors.