Executives Receive Average of $48,000 : Ford Pays $248 Million in Bonuses

Ford Motor Chairman Donald E. Petersen received $2.8 million in bonuses in addition to his $929,934 salary for 1987, according to the company’s proxy statement issued Tuesday.

Vice Chairman Harold A. Poling got $2 million in bonuses and $808,697 in salary and benefits, according to the proxy statement being mailed to the company’s 265,000 stockholders.

In all, the statement said the company paid $247.9 million in bonuses to 5,166 executives. That works out to an average bonus of nearly $48,000 apiece.

The bonuses came in a year when the company posted a record profit of $4.6 billion, up 41% from 1986.

Last month, Ford handed out profit-sharing checks amounting to a record $636 million to more than 156,000 hourly and salaried workers in the United States, making for an average check of just more than $4,000 each.

In a statement Tuesday, United Auto Workers President Owen Bieber and Vice President Stephen P. Yokich, who directs the union’s Ford department, said the executive bonuses “send the wrong message to workers and consumers.”

“When it comes to executive compensation, Ford’s behavior shows the same greedy, shortsighted instincts that almost all American corporations exhibit,” they said. “We just don’t believe that Mr. Petersen or anyone else is worth over 100 times as much as a UAW production worker is worth to Ford.”

Statement Due Soon

General Motors Corp. previously reported its profit rose 20.6% in 1987 to $3.56 billion and that about 5,000 of its top executives would receive stock valued at $184.6 million. But the nation’s No. 1 auto maker said its profit wasn’t sufficient to provide profit-sharing checks for its unionized workers.

Chrysler Corp., the nation’s third-largest car maker, is expected to issue its proxy statement next week. Chrysler previously reported its 1987 profit fell 7.1% to $1.29 billion.

In 1986, Ford’s Petersen received $1.3 million in supplemental income in addition to his $660,772 in salary and benefits. That same year, Poling got $1.1 million in addition to his $531,327 in salary and benefits.

“The company’s outstanding success in the past year resulted from the dedicated efforts of the entire Ford team,” Petersen said. “It is fitting that our employees share in this success.”

Ford said in the proxy statement that $363.9 million could have been credited under the supplemental compensation payments for its executives.

But a committee of the company’s board of directors decided to limit the bonus payments to $247.9 million, allocate $113.9 million for unspecified company business and expenses and keep $2.1 million in the supplemental bonus fund.

In 1986, 5,528 executives received $164.3 million in bonuses from a potential payment pool of $241.9 million.