Typically when you sell your business, you cut off contact with your former employees and count your money as you gently float into retirement. Not so with J.C. Huizenga, who when he sold his namesake machinery manufacturing company and decided to share the spoils with his workers in the form of bonuses.
The Huizenga Group chairman generously distributed nearly six million dollars in bonuses to more than 575 workers in his two Michigan factories.
He saw this as his way of thanking the employees for helping grow the company, which now earns about $170 million in annual sales.
“It is a team of people — I’ll take people over assets all day long,” Huizenga said in a segment on CBS This Morning.” “It was very appropriate when we sold the company that employees should participate in the wealth we created.”
Employees received bonuses based on how long they worked at the company, with some of the longest tenured workers received up to $50,000.
