After telling its United Auto Worker union-represented employees last month that there wouldn’t be any 2025 profit sharing checks for them since the automaker, well, didn’t turn a profit, the automaker decided to give some of its salaried employees performance bonuses anyway. As you may imagine, the UAW’s leadership and its rank and file members didn’t take too kindly to that.
Now, a group that includes on-site managers, corporate staffers and salaried trade workers will be getting performance bonuses at the end of March despite the fact the company took a $26.5 billion loss in 2025, but there’s no word on how many employees actually got bonuses The news was confirmed by a Stellantis spokesperson. From the Detroit Free Press:
A salaried, nonunionized employee at Stellantis can qualify for a performance bonus in three categories: company-wide, divisional and individual. No company-wide bonuses are going out for the automaker’s poor performance in 2025, but the company confirmed that some divisions and individuals will receive bonuses for their performance last year.
“The compensation package for some non-bargaining unit employees includes a Stellantis Annual Incentive Plan (SAIP) payment, which is driven by three performance pillars — company, division and individual — with specific financial and non-financial annual targets as well as results from the divisions to which they are aligned and personal goals,” Stellantis spokesperson Jodi Tinson said in a statement. “As Stellantis’ overall 2025 performance results did not meet the established targets, the company component of SAIP will not be paid. Payment of the divisional and individual payments remain directly conditional on the results achieved.”
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Rich Boyer, United Auto Workers vice president who oversees the Stellantis department of the union, told the Detroit Free Press he was “disgusted” to hear that some managers would be getting bonuses.
“The UAW, as well as I personally, am disgusted that we were just informed that management employees will be receiving a bonus check while Stellantis UAW members did not receive a profit-sharing check,” Boyer said. “Our members help drive this company’s success each and every year and they deserve to share in its success.”
UAW President Shawn Fain, too, called the news the “epitome of corporate greed” in a statement to the Free Press.
Bonuses for the non-bargaining unit employees at Stellantis are part of the yearly compensation package and paid out if an employee or department can meet certain goals. On the union side, however, profit-sharing checks rely on one key metric: adjusted operating income.
Even though Stellantis made headlines with a $26 billion loss, the union negotiated to pay out profit-sharing checks according to adjusted operating income, a term used to describe a special formula that exempts unique costs the company faced in a given year. The company’s $26 billion write-down, lost as it pivoted away from electric vehicles, was deemed an extraordinary expense and is exempted from adjusted operating income, the bucket of cash UAW employees draw from.
Nonetheless, Stellantis’ adjusted operating income — with the massive write-downs exempted — was still a loss of $2.2 billion.
At least CEO Antonio Filosa and Chairman John Elkann missed out on some big chunks of their multimillion-dollar paydays. Don’t worry, though. They were still paid handsomely.
Filosa, who took over the company in June, made $6.3 million for his work in 2025 — a combination of his $1.6 million base salary, a $2.2 million relocation stipend, nearly a million dollars in benefits and a $1.7 million grant from the company. In total, Filosa came in shy of the nearly $12 million he could have made had the company hit all of its targets.
Filosa, as well as Stellantis Chairman John Elkann, missed out on multimillion-dollar paydays for missing their performance goals, according to Stellantis’ filings. Filosa could have earned at most $6.4 million in bonuses atop his $1.6 million salary, and Elkann would have made $2.7 million if the company could have grown sales, increased quality, lowered warranty costs, and increased cash flow and income.
Warranty cost was the only metric in which the company exceeded goals, falling short of all others. Elkann and Filosa did not receive any bonus payouts.
Both Boyer and Fain called it a “massive slap in the face and the epitome of corporate greed.”
