Reporter Confronts GM CEO About Her Growing $30 Million Salary: ‘Why Should Your Workers Not Get The Same Pay Increases?’

General Motors’s CEO Mary Barra claimed her $30 million yearly salary was the result of “record profit-sharing” that all employees enjoy, even as the United Auto Workers Union began striking Friday in search of higher pay.

Barra said she was “disappointed and frustrated” with the strike, even though management put a “historic offer on the table.”

“The union is demanding, asking for a 40% wage increase over four years. They’re asking for that in part because they say CEOs like yourself leading the Big Three are making those kind of pay increases over the course of the last four years. You’ve seen a 34% pay increase in your salary. You make almost $30 million. Why should your workers not get the same type of pay increases that you’re getting leading the company?” asked CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich.

“Well, if you look at compensation, my compensation, 92% of it is based on performance of the company,” Barra said, continuing:

I think one of the strong aspects of the way our compensation for our representative employees is designed is not only are we putting a 20% increase on the table, we have profit sharing. So, when the company does well, everyone does well. For the last several years, that’s resulted in record profit sharing for our represented employees.

So, I think you have to look at the whole compensation package. Not only a 20% increase in gross wage, but also the profit sharing aspect of it, world class health care, and there’s several other features. We think we have a very competitive offer on the table, and that’s why we want to get back there and get this done.

Earlier, CNN reporter Gabe Cohen asked the president of the UAW Local 12 in Toledo, Ohio, why the strike was necessary.

“Well, one thing that drives us crazy is, we went through bankruptcy with Barack Obama in 2008 and the beginning of 2009,” Bruce Baumhower said. “And we were told by the president we had to give up huge concessions for them to get the government support to turn their companies around. We did that. And it hasn’t been reversed. When we came out of bankruptcy, our starting pay at Jeep was $15.78. Fifteen years later, it’s $15.78. There’s something wrong with that.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.