DETROIT (Bloomberg) -- U.S. automakers may seek to start providing as much as 15 percent of union workers' compensation in performance bonuses and lump-sum payments, emulating how their Japanese counterparts and salaried employees are paid.

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler Group may try to avoid granting annual raises to their 107,000 hourly employees as they negotiate new contracts with the United Auto Workers this year, said Sean McAlinden, chief economist for the Center for Automotive Research.

Instead, the companies may offer bonuses totaling as much as $10,000 a year that would partially depend on meeting productivity and quality goals.

UAW President Bob King, who convenes the union's bargaining convention in Detroit starting Tuesday, has said he is open to new forms of profit sharing.

If workers agree to put more of their pay at risk, it could mark the biggest shift in compensation practices since former UAW President Walter Reuther won wage guarantees for laid-off autoworkers in the 1950s.

"Bob is on the cusp of setting a revolutionary new design for compensation in the auto industry," said McAlinden, a former autoworker who is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "It fits with Bob's goal of sharing in the success of the companies."

The issue of variable pay may be discussed at the quadrennial bargaining convention, where more than 1,200 UAW officials will set strategy for this year's contract talks.

The UAW's four-year agreements with GM, Ford and Chrysler expire in September. King didn't respond to a request for comment.

Workers' concessions

King says workers must be rewarded for the $7,000 to $30,000 in concessions they each made since 2005 to help the automakers survive.

Workers gave up raises, bonuses and cost-of- living adjustments, and the UAW agreed to a two-tier wage system in which new hires earn about $14 an hour, half the amount paid to senior production workers.

UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles, who leads bargaining with Ford, said the union hopes to recover all it surrendered.

"We always look for everything -- plus," he said last week at an event at a Ford factory in Wayne, Mich. "We're going to negotiate smart. We're not going to cut our nose off and spite our faces."

Neither King nor Settles condemned the $56.5 million stock award Ford granted Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally this month for reviving the automaker, which earned $9.28 billion in the last two years after $30.1 billion in losses from 2006 through 2008.

"I'm going to look at it on the upside and say I know they compensated them very well at the top, so I feel that they're going to compensate us at the bottom very well," Settles said.

Profit-sharing checks

Ford this month paid its 40,600 hourly workers profit- sharing checks averaging $5,000, the most since 2000.

GM, which earned $6.17 billion last year after reorganizing in bankruptcy in 2009, has said it will give record profit-sharing checks averaging $4,300 to its 45,000 hourly workers.

Chrysler, which also reorganized in 2009 and lost $652 million last year, is paying its union workers an average bonus of $750.

"With these profit-sharing checks, it's the hope of all three automakers that they are making a down payment on a more incentive-based pay system," said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California-Berkeley. "There's nothing like that check to show that it can be done."

Autoworkers may receive another check of as much as $5,000 in the second half of the year as a "signing bonus" to ratify a new contract with more performance-based pay, McAlinden said.

The contracts may call for two such payments a year, one that is guaranteed and the other dependent upon profitability and workers achieving productivity and quality goals, he said.

Japanese workers

Japanese autoworkers receive as much as 40 percent of their compensation in bonuses tied to performance, McAlinden said. Salaried workers at GM, Ford and Chrysler receive 10 percent to 15 percent of their pay in bonuses, he said.

"Our compensation, part of it, is variable, and really it's paying against performance," said Mark Fields, Ford's president of the Americas, who received stock awards worth $4.66 million this month under Ford's long-term incentive plan. "It all comes down to a discussion around what does it mean to be competitive? When you can be competitive in every element of your business, the business succeeds, and everybody should share in that."

Jodi Tinson, a Chrysler spokeswoman, and Kim Carpenter, a GM spokeswoman, declined to comment.

It may be difficult to convince autoworkers who sacrificed raises to continue to forgo annual improvements to base pay in favor of bonuses, said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Seeking 'predictability'

"Western workers don't like to have a significant part of their compensation depend upon something unpredictable," Chaison said. "Workers want to know what they're making in order to plan, and that requires predictability, while variable pay implies flexibility."

King will be under pressure from workers to return to the old formula of annual raises, Chaison said. The UAW leader also will be pressed by the companies to keep labor rates competitive with Asian and European automakers.

"He's got to walk a fine line," Chaison said.

After enduring plant closings and job cuts for the last decade, workers are seeking stability and guarantees of new work coming into factories, the UAW's Settles said.

"Our membership wants longevity," Settles said. "We want long-term security, and we're going to be trying to move toward that."

Fifa presidential candidate Mohamed Bin Hammam has stated that he will make the bidding process for future World Cups more open if he is elected to the post.

Bin Hammam said Fifa was not corrupt but told the BBC the organisation needed to be more transparent.

"We need to explain decision making - people are making decisions that affect millions," he told BBC sports editor David Bond.

Bin Hammam added: "We belong to the people - acting on behalf of them."

Fifa president Sepp Blatter came under fire after Fifa's vote in December for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which were awarded to Russia and Qatar respectively.

There were allegations of corruption in the bidding process and two executive committee members were suspended, while four other officials were sanctioned.

We need a greater understanding between Fifa and associations. We are friends and not enemies Mohamed Bin Hammam

Bin Hammam, the Asian Football Confederation president, said the public would have more confidence in Fifa if the process was opened up to scrutiny.

"It's reasonable and logical to vote openly - it happens in other organisations, why shouldn't it happen in Fifa?" he said.

The 61-year-old Qatari also defended his country's bid for the 2022 World Cup.

He said it was the "correct decision" to award the tournament to Qatar and insisted the country "did nothing wrong" in the bidding process.

He said the 2022 bid was "respected by the world", but admitted future bidding processes "have to be transparent so that the public can see exactly what is happening".

Bin Hammam went on to add that there was a need to reduce the decision making burden on Fifa's central committee, and "give confederations more responsibility".

"We need a greater understanding between Fifa and associations" he said. "We are friends and not enemies. We need a common understanding - our interests are all the same."

He also stressed that he was in favour of the introduction of goal-line technology.

The election for a new president takes place at the two-day Fifa Congress in Zurich, which starts on 31 May.

Blatter, 75, has been in charge of world football's governing body since June 1998, and has not been challenged since 2002, when he defeated African confederation president Issa Hayatou by 139 votes to 56.