On September 26, 2026, Deadline Detroit published a column by Eric Starkman, a former Detroit News business reporter, arguing that Michigan’s closely watched U.S. Senate race should make America’s wealth gap a central issue — and that the place to start is General Motors CEO Mary Barra’s pay. Starkman’s piece landed days after an Automotive News/Equilar study ranked Barra among the highest-paid auto executives in the country, with $48.2 million in realized compensation for 2025.
The numbers behind the column are not in dispute, even if the outrage is a matter of opinion. GM’s own proxy statement puts Barra’s 2025 pay at $29.9 million — 333 times what the company’s median employee earned. In the same year, GM’s roughly 47,000 UAW-represented hourly workers saw their profit-sharing checks cut by about $4,000 each, and salaried employees saw their bonus formula shrink.
Why it matters now: Michigan voters pick a new senator on November 3, 2026, in a race rated a toss-up, in a state built by auto wages. Whether candidates engage with CEO pay or not, the gap between the person at the top of GM and the people on its assembly lines has rarely been easier to measure — or harder to explain to a family that counted on a profit-sharing check to pay for a wedding or catch up on bills.
What Starkman actually argued
Writing in Deadline Detroit, Starkman said Barra is “blessed” that Michigan’s Senate campaign has stayed focused on Middle East politics rather than wealth disparity, because otherwise there might be “populist outrage” over her pay in a year when worker bonuses fell. He argued GM’s tens of billions in stock buybacks supported the share price and “juiced executive performance metrics,” delivering Barra a payday while net income collapsed.
His column is opinion, and its sharpest characterizations — “bloated compensation,” a “buyback-fueled payday” — are his judgments, not established facts. But he closed with a concrete suggestion: that reporters ask both Senate candidates to comment on Barra’s pay and make corporate governance a frontline election issue. So far, neither campaign is known to have responded.
Two numbers, both true: $29.9 million or $48.2 million?
The gap between the two headline figures is a matter of accounting method, not error. GM’s proxy statement, filed with the SEC on April 20, 2026, reports Barra’s 2025 total compensation as $29,895,868 — a $2.1 million salary (unchanged since 2017), $21.6 million in stock awards, a $4.96 million incentive payout, and about $1.2 million in other compensation.
Automotive News and Equilar instead measure what executives actually pocket when stock options are exercised and equity awards vest. By that yardstick, Barra realized $48.2 million in 2025, up 61.7 percent from $29.8 million the year before, as GM’s stock hit new highs. CarBuzz writer Evan Williams calculated that this works out to roughly $24,000 for every working hour — about the price of a new Chevrolet Trax.
The year the workers’ checks got smaller
The same 2025 that produced Barra’s biggest realized payday was a rough one on paper for GM. Net income fell 55 percent, from $6.0 billion to $2.7 billion, dragged down by $7.9 billion in charges tied to scaling back the company’s electric-vehicle plans. North American pretax profit — the number that sets union profit sharing — dropped 28 percent to $10.4 billion.
Under the contract formula, that meant UAW-represented workers received up to $10,500 in profit sharing for 2025, down from a record $14,500 the year before — a cut of roughly 28 to 32 percent, depending on how it’s measured, and the lowest payout since 2021. Salaried employees’ bonus multiplier fell from 144 percent to 114 percent, according to Detroit Free Press reporting. One GM worker told CBS News Detroit he had been counting on the money to help pay for a wedding; another said he wanted the UAW to “go to battle” with management.
| Measure | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Barra’s pay (GM proxy) | $29.5 million | $29.9 million |
| Barra’s realized pay (Automotive News/Equilar) | $29.8 million | $48.2 million |
| GM median employee pay | $95,111 | $89,785 |
| CEO-to-median-worker ratio (proxy) | 310-to-1 | 333-to-1 |
| UAW profit-sharing check (for that year’s results) | up to $14,500 | up to $10,500 |
| GM net income | $6.0 billion | $2.7 billion |
The buyback question
GM bought back $6 billion of its own stock in 2025, and in January 2026 its board authorized another $6 billion repurchase while raising the quarterly dividend 20 percent. Buybacks shrink the share count, which supports the stock price and per-share metrics — the kind of measures that feed executive equity awards. Starkman argues this is the engine of Barra’s payday; GM’s board, in the proxy, frames her pay as tied to performance targets the company met, and the company notes 2025 delivered a 54 percent total return to investors and GM’s highest U.S. market share since 2015.
Starkman also pointed to insider behavior, citing GuruFocus data showing GM insiders sold $225.9 million of stock over the previous 12 months with no open-market purchases — even as CFO Paul Jacobson called GM’s stock a “bargain” on CNBC in July, according to the column. Insider sales are legal and often pre-scheduled; readers should treat the implication of a disconnect as Starkman’s interpretation, not a finding of wrongdoing.
How GM stacks up against the rest of corporate America
Barra’s 333-to-1 proxy ratio sits above the broader market. The AFL-CIO’s 2026 Executive Paywatch report found the average S&P 500 CEO made $22.8 million in 2025 — 312 times the median U.S. worker, up from 285 times in 2024, and that’s excluding Elon Musk’s Tesla package, which the AFL-CIO valued at $158.3 billion.
Starkman used Musk as his counterpoint, noting that Musk takes no salary, realized nothing in 2025, and gets paid only if Tesla hits aggressive milestones. That comparison cuts both ways: Musk’s package, if earned, would dwarf Barra’s pay by three orders of magnitude, which is why labor groups cite it as the extreme of the same problem. For a GM assembly worker, the more relevant comparison is simpler: top production wages under the 2023 UAW contract are headed toward roughly $42 an hour by 2028, including cost-of-living adjustments — about $87,000 a year before overtime. Barra’s realized 2025 pay equaled more than 500 such salaries.
Why the Senate race is the stage
Michigan’s open Senate seat — Democrat Abdul El-Sayed versus Republican Mike Rogers, with the election set for November 3 — is rated a toss-up, with polling averages in early October showing El-Sayed ahead by about three points. A Fox News poll found inflation is the race’s top issue and four in ten Michigan voters say they are falling behind financially.
That is the opening Starkman identified: El-Sayed has said he opposes corporate stock buybacks, while Rogers is backed by President Trump, who has criticized companies for spending on share repurchases instead of investment. In other words, both candidates have, at least rhetorically, positioned themselves against the mechanism Starkman says funded Barra’s payday — yet neither has made GM’s pay practices a campaign issue. Whether that reflects political caution in a state where GM is a major employer, or simply other priorities, is not something the public record settles.
What happens next
Michigan votes on November 3, 2026. GM workers will learn early in 2027 what their profit-sharing checks for 2026 look like; the company has guided to a rebound, projecting $10.3 billion to $11.7 billion in net income, which under the UAW formula would point to larger checks if North American profits recover as forecast. Barra’s 2026 compensation will be disclosed in GM’s proxy statement next spring — and Barra, who turns 65 in December 2026, will face continuing questions about succession. Whether any reporter takes up Starkman’s challenge and puts the 333-to-1 question directly to El-Sayed and Rogers before Election Day remains to be seen.
Editorial note: This article reports on an opinion column. Characterizations of Barra’s pay as excessive are attributed opinions; GM’s board states her compensation reflects performance against approved targets. No allegation of illegality has been made against Barra, GM, or its executives.
Sources
- Deadline Detroit — https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/35117/starkman_michigan_s_senate_race_should_focus_on_wealth_gap_in_america_and_start_with_mary_barra_s_bloated_compensation
- GM Authority (Automotive News/Equilar study) — https://gmauthority.com/blog/2026/09/gms-mary-barra-ranks-third-among-highest-paid-automotive-ceos-in-2025
- CarBuzz — https://carbuzz.com/2025-automotive-ceo-pay-list
- StockTitan, GM DEF 14A proxy summary — https://www.stocktitan.net/sec-filings/GM/def-14a-general-motors-co-definitive-proxy-statement-b78f04a134c6.html
- Gloom, GM 2026 proxy data — https://gloom.sh/stocks/gm/proxy/2026
- GM Q4/full-year 2025 results (SEC filing) — https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467858/000146785826000011/gmq42025pressreleaseandfin.htm
- GM 10-K FY2025 — https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467858/000146785826000013/gm-20251231.htm
- PR Newswire, GM 2025 results and $6B buyback — https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gm-releases-2025-financial-results-and-2026-guidance-board-declares-dividend-at-20-higher-quarterly-rate-and-approves-new-6-0-billion-share-repurchase-authorization-302670831.html
- WardsAuto — https://www.wardsauto.com/news/gm-reports-55-billion-decline-net-income-2025-ev-charges-earnings/810616/
- GM Authority, UAW profit-sharing cut — https://gmauthority.com/blog/2026/01/gm-uaw-worker-profit-sharing-checks-cut-32-percent/
- CBS News Detroit — https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/general-motors-hourly-worker-profit-sharing-checks/
- GM Authority, salaried bonus cut — https://gmauthority.com/blog/2026/01/gm-salaried-employees-to-get-smaller-bonus-checks-this-year/
- Detroit Free Press via Yahoo Finance, salaried bonuses — https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gms-salaried-global-workforce-see-191956482.html
- Detroit News, Barra 2024 compensation — https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/general-motors/2025/04/11/general-motors-ceo-compensation-2024-mary-barra/83048845007/
- AFL-CIO 2026 Executive Paywatch — https://aflcio.org/paywatch
- AFL-CIO press release — https://aflcio.org/press/releases/afl-cio-report-shows-top-ceos-made-312-times-workers-pay-2025
- UAW, GM tentative agreement — https://uaw.org/https-wordpress-292599-4072067-cloudwaysapps-com-uaw-reaches-tentative-agreement-general-motors-bringing-ultium-cells-workers-master-agreement/
- CBS News, UAW contract terms — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uaw-agreement-gm-ford-stellantis-contract/
- Wikipedia, 2026 U.S. Senate election in Michigan — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_Senate_election_in_Michigan
- RealClearPolitics, Michigan Senate polling — https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/senate/general/2026/michigan/rogers-vs-el-sayed
- The Hill/Emerson poll — https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6093219-el-sayed-rogers-michigan-senate-poll/
- Fox News Michigan poll — https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-senate-battle-looms-michigan
- KLIF, 2026 profit-sharing roundup — https://www.klif.com/2026/07/29/top-u-s-companies-paying-big-employee-bonuses-so-far-in-2026-delta-gm-ford/
Leave a Reply