General Motors hourly workers to get lower profit-sharing payouts this year

Some General Motors employees are taken aback by this year's profit-sharing checks, with it being $4,000 less than the previous one.

"I would like our UAW representatives to stand up to the plate and go to battle with the management at GM," said a GM employee.

The employee, who has worked for the company for almost 30 years as a metal model maker, says that for every $1 billion the company makes in North American sales, he should receive a $1,000 bonus.

But he says the decline in electric vehicle sales is why he and other hourly GM employees received smaller checks.

"Management is stumbling over their poor EV choices, forcing that EV stuff out there and people don't want and didn't buy, and now they've got to find a way to stumble through it," he said.

However, Paul Eisenstein, editor with Headlight.News, says tariffs are also to blame.

"We know the automaker basically lost billions of dollars in terms of the hit that it took, largely swallowing the trump tariffs in the last nine months or so," said Eisenstein.

Workers like the employee CBS News Detroit spoke to were counting on this money to pay bills, or in his case, help pay for a wedding. But Eisenstein says the amount is what the UAW agreed on in years past.

"Could the UAW convince gm to tweak that formula? It's possible, but I doubt it," said Eisenstein.

In a statement, the UAW says it prided the hard work of those it represents but that the amount was within the terms negotiated in the UAW GM national agreement.