UAW members could receive record profit-sharing bonuses from Ford Motor Co. and near-record payouts from General Motors, after both automakers surpassed their 2025 earnings in only nine months this year.

Meanwhile, Stellantis factoryworkers are in danger of missing out on the bonuses for a second consecutive year. The smallest of the Detroit 3 is back in the black after losing money in 2025, but its profits haven’t recovered to thelevel that triggers the payouts.

That could mean GM workersgetting at least $10,000 more than their counterparts at Stellantis for thethird year in a row. UAW leaders slammed Stellantis’ lack of bonuses in 2026 as a product of “corporate greed” and mismanagement by former CEO Carlos Tavares.

“It wasn’t the workers who made bad decisions that drove Stellantis’ profits in the ditch,” President Shawn Fain said in March. “It was horrible management from the CEO down. But, as always, the executives get rewarded while the workers get screwed.”

The disparity between bonuses at GM and Stellantis could influence the UAW’s next round of contract talks in 2028. Union members may push harder for pay raises after seeing Stellantis workers left out of profit sharing for several years, said Marick Masters, a labor expert at Wayne State University in Detroit.

“I can see this becoming a major bargaining position taken by the UAW in 2028,” Masters said. “There will be a certain number of workers who are going to say, ‘This profit-sharing formula really doesn’t help us. … It shouldn’t be a substitute for the base pay increases.’”

Profit-sharing payouts

The Detroit 3 have made record profit-sharing payments to their UAW-represented workers in recent years, but lower earnings reduced the average bonus received in 2026 by nearly 40 percent.

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Source: Company reports

Tariffs and other cost increases reduced hourly employees’ profit-sharing checks at all three Detroit automakers this year, which were based on their 2025 results. Eligible workers got as much as $10,500 at GM, a 28 percent drop, and $6,780 at Ford, 34 percent less than last year.

Three quarters into 2026, GM has posted $10.7 billion in adjusted North American earnings before interest and taxes, topping the $10.5 billion it earned for all of last year. That means higher payouts in 2027, barring an unexpected fourth-quarter loss.

In fact, GM workers would get their second-highest profit-sharing checks ever — around $13,000 — if the company delivers on its full-year guidance of $14.5 billion to $15.5 billion in adjusted EBIT and continues to get at least 87 percent of that from North America.

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At Ford, which no longer reports North American results separately, the UAW’s profit-sharing formula uses global earnings instead. Ford on Oct. 28 forecast adjusted EBIT of $10.5 billion to $11 billion this year.

That would give Ford’s UAW membership — the largest of the Detroit 3 — bonuses of at least $10,500, topping the record $10,416 that the company paid out in 2024.

GM’s record is $14,500, paid in 2025.

The biggest profit-sharing checks ever at the Detroit 3 went to Stellantis workers in 2023: $14,760.

But this year, the company paid nothing because its North American business lost $2.2 billion in 2025. Its UAW contract gives workers $900 for every 1 percent of North American profit margin.

With three months to go, that margin stands at 1.2 percent for 2026, and the contract doesn’t require payouts under 2 percent. The company fell short of that threshold in each of the first three quarters and would need a margin of more than 4 percent in the fourth quarter to bring its full-year average high enough.

Will Lehman, one of five candidates who unsuccessfully challenged Fain’s reelection bid this fall, said union leaders shoulder some blame for agreeing to tie workers’ earnings to their employers’ financial performance.

“The elimination of profit-sharing checks by Stellantis is a slap in the face to workers who have created billions in wealth through their labor,” Lehman wrote on his campaign website in February. “It means bills unpaid, homes at risk, cars repossessed, and plans postponed.”