More than 10,000 employees of the Tennessee Valley Authority will have extra reason to be thankful during Thanksgiving week when TVA pays its workers a record amount of performance pay.
TVA in December had its first rolling blackouts amid a cold spell, and a foreman died working on a natural gas pipe in September, but TVA said the utility performed the best it ever has on measures such as reliability and safety and will pay out a record-high $253 million of extra employee pay in next week’s paychecks.
The median performance reward for TVA workers will be $10,214. That’s up nearly 55% from a year ago.
The utility has added more than 500 more employees in the past year. Those hired after July 1 will not receive the incentive pay this year, and those hired before July 1 will receive the incentives on a prorated basis depending on what portion of the fiscal year they were on staff.