Way back a long time ago, when Gila Monsters ruled the earth, they started a program called participative pay, we all gave up one-year merit increase/raise(3.5%) to fund this Participative Pay Program(PPP), and if memory serves me correctly, we were eventually supposed to get it back, the program went on for a few years, and they just happened to start it during the roaring '90s, there wasn't a plane or helicopter out there that was being fitted with an HW flight deck, we got a few small payouts, once or twice we got a decent payout, then someone noticed that Bell Road was outperforming 19th ave and our pay was adjusted to help shore them up seeing how they had carried bell Rd for so many years. Then one year they posted record earnings and gave us a middle of the road PPP, ya see it was the higher-ups who made all of this possible, not the extremely talented engineering staff, the in-house manufacturing, they very soon after ditched the PPP program, we never got our seed money merit increase back, it was handwaved away as "Well, ya see what happened was, well it was kind of like this ya see".
Oh, and engineers used to get paid overtime after something like 4 or 6 free hours. 2 raises a year, and a cost of living increase... But, we have a puzzle room!