TVA to pay out $127 million in employee incentives

photo TVA's Bill Johnson

Just in time for all of those Black Friday sales, the Tennessee Valley Authority will pay out $127 million today in performance bonuses to most of its 12,612 employees.

For most full-time TVA workers, the annual incentive equals about 5 percent of their pay, or more than $3,600 for the average TVA worker earning the utility's median base pay of about $73,000 a year.

The incentive pay is down nearly 20 percent from the record high paid a year ago, primarily because such payments are based upon ever higher performance standards each year, TVA President Bill Johnson said.

The incentive payments, which include $115 million in Winning Performance pay for most employees and another $11 million in executive bonuses to senior TVA employees, come just a couple of months after TVA granted an average 2.9 percent raise to engineers at TVA represented by the Engineering Association (EA)/ IFTPE Local 1937.

TVA has voluntarily agreed to abide by the freeze on federal salaries for its 3,000 managers, but other employees represented by unions at TVA are not included in the federal pay freeze, TVA spokesman Duncan Mansfield said.

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