Annual Service Bonus is Part of Iowa Employee’s Average Weekly Wage Computation

Where the only conditions precedent to receiving an annual bonus was simply being an “active employee on November 30th of the year the bonus was paid and the condition precedent to receiving the quarterly bonus was being employed on the last day of the quarter, the bonuses were sufficiently regular so as to be included in computing an injured employee’s average weekly wage, held an Iowa appellate court in Pella Corp. v. Minar, 2014 Iowa App. LEXIS 826 (Aug. 13, 2014). The court acknowledged that the annual bonuses varied from year to year, but stressed that a bonus had actually been paid for many years. While the annual bonus is question was not paid until after the claimant’s actual injury, the claimant’s right to that bonus vested five days prior to the incident. The commissioner’s inclusion of the annual service bonus in the rate calculation was not ”irrational, illogical, or wholly unjustified,” said the court.