CONTRIBUTING EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP PLAN

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2021

Retirement Benefits [Abstract]

CONTRIBUTING EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP PLAN

NOTE 15. CONTRIBUTING EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP PLAN

The Contributing Employee Ownership Plan (CEOP) is a defined contribution plan available to essentially all domestic employees.  We provide a contribution to an individual retirement contribution account maintained with the CEOP equal to an amount of between 5.0% and 7.5% of the employee’s eligible compensation.  The defined contribution plan expense for the three months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020 was $9.3 million and $6.5 million, respectively, and for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020 was $26.6 million and $21.5 million, respectively.

Company matching contributions are invested in the same investment allocation as the employee’s contribution.  Our matching contributions for eligible employees for the three months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020 were $3.5 million and $0.8 million, respectively, and for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020 were $10.4 million and $2.3 million, respectively. Effective January 1, 2020, we suspended the match on all salaried and non-bargaining hourly employees’ contributions, and moved to a discretionary contribution model with contributions contingent upon company-wide financial performance. During 2020, we did not make a discretionary matching contribution. Effective January 1, 2021, we reinstated the match on all salaried and non-bargaining hourly employees’ contributions, which provides for a maximum 3.0% matching contribution based on the level of participant contributions.