Lincoln Electric’s annual profit-sharing bonus ceremony was held today in the firm’s Cleveland cafeteria. Here are the details, first for the US (parent corporation,) and second for Canada  (wholly-owned subsidiary.)

for the 3,000 US employees: 

80     =     uninterrupted years of paying an employee bonus  (i.e. profitable every year since 1934.)

$ 33,029     =    average 2013 bonus per U.S. employee

$ 81,366     =     average 2013 total earnings per U.S. employee    (= wages-or-salary + bonus)

$ 100.7 million  =     total pre-tax profit shared with employees (largest bonus pool ever)

0              =   number of layoffs in 2013       (65 years without any layoffs)

AND …. Lincoln remains #1 in the global marketplace (LECO: Nasdaq, currently at an all-time high)

The Guaranteed Continuous Employment Policy remains unbroken since at least 1948.  (The no-layoff track record may in fact go as far back as 1925.)
No one has been laid off for lack of work through the Great Depression, wars and now the Great Recession.

for the 264 Canadian employees:

74    =     uninterrupted years of paying a bonus  (continuously profitable since 1940 !)

$  19,000     =    average 2013 bonus per Canadian employee

$  73,300     =     average 2013 total earnings per Canadian employee     (= wages/salary + bonus)

$  5 million =     total pre-tax profits shared among employees

0           =     number of layoffs in 2013

  These figures once again provide convincing and reassuring evidence that it is possible to run a very profitable, very large, technologically superior multinational business based in North America while honoring your obligations to employees, customers, investors and society at large. This need not be a zero-sum game, a delusion embraced by far too many, especially in the past few years.

Lincoln Electric remains in 2013, as it has since the 1930s, the dominant player in the global electric welding industry and yet, it refuses to lay off its employees in tough times.

Happy Holidays  and all the best for 2014.