Filed under: Hirings/Firings/Layoffs, GM
GM offers early retirement to 9,000 white collar workers
As part of the ongoing numbers game between the Detroit 3, their workers and the UAW, General Motors has plans to offer more early retirement packages to some 9,000 of its white collar (non-unionized and salaried, that is) workers. For those who like to keep track of such things, that number represents about a third of the 27,000 white-collar, non-union workers who call the General their employer. If GM gets its wish, around half of those offered packages will accept and have plenty of time to keep those white collars clean and pressed for their next job interview. Employees offered the package will have 45-days to decide whether or not to accept. Although no real details of the care package have been released, rumor has it that GM has sweetened the pot a bit as compared to previous rounds of attrition by increasing the pension payments for younger workers.
[Source: The Detroit Free Press, Photo by silent (e) | CC2.0]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MachinaDC5 2:45PM (8/29/2008)
Damn those union- oh wait...
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Rob 2:53PM (8/29/2008)
I find it staggering that a car company can employ 27,000 people that have nothing to do with building cars. To me this seems like a ridiculous amount of overhead to begin with. Take Wal-mart for example, while I hate to shop there, they don't tolerate any fluff or unnecessary overhead.
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MachinaDC5 3:03PM (8/29/2008)
There's a lot of number crunching, marketing, PR, general financing/investing, guys carrying around coffee mugs leaning over cubical walls going "Yyyyeeeaaahhh... uh.... *sip* Did you get the memo?" to be done when it comes to running a global car manufacturer giant like GM.
pio!pio! 3:04PM (8/29/2008)
I can believe it. 27000 people / 50 states is oly 540 per state...even if dividing by state is not realistic..remember they are a global company...they wlil have white collar employees world wide.
management + marketing + sales + engineering + design + warranty claims + lending + legal + accounting etc etc etc
That can easily be 27000 white collar jobs for a global company that moves a ton of cars a year
pio!pio! 3:13PM (8/29/2008)
if you take walmart as an example like you did..according to wikipedia, in 2005 they had 1.6 million employees and 6200 facilities...258 employees per facility...is that reasonable when you talk about fluff and unnecessary overhead?
Sandok 3:23PM (8/29/2008)
GM isn't Lotus or Morgan or something... They're a superpower, don't you think they'd have quite a few whitecollar workers?
VP 3:41PM (8/29/2008)
Do you think assembly line workers take care of running the whole company? GM is one of the biggest corporations in the world, ofcourse they are going to have a huge white collar workforce.
Rob 4:20PM (8/29/2008)
Sandok: A few... but 27,000?
pio!pio!: Did you know Wal-mart execs have to share a hotel room? Also Wal-mart's employees are doing work directly with customers, not white collar. They stock shelves, etc.
Martman 3:09PM (8/29/2008)
What are these people doing!!and if anything constructive who will do ther work after.
What other company in the world has 9000 spare employees. And they are asking your goverment for bailouts!!!Very hard to believe but, I guess coming from a company that pays its CEO's $15 million while lossing money, nothing is surprizing!!
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Nightcrawler 4:26PM (8/29/2008)
Exactly Martman. These people were presumably contributing something, unless GM was so incompetent to have do-nothing freeloaders hanging around. Who is going to do whatever these white collar folks were doing up until now?
robdon 10:00AM (8/30/2008)
Of course they have several thou people to spare - their share is dropping like a rock, thus the overcapacity, just like the factories. Get a clue.
Richard Warren 3:26PM (8/29/2008)
"I find it staggering that a car company can employ 27,000 people that have nothing to do with building cars. To me this seems like a ridiculous amount of overhead to begin with. Take Wal-mart for example, while I hate to shop there, they don't tolerate any fluff or unnecessary overhead. "
Don't have a clue do you?
Try the federal bureaucracy talk about numbers.
By the way, WalMart is far from the ideal model of employee efficency.
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E 4:08PM (8/29/2008)
Well, at least one person I know got offered 6 months salary. He's almost Bob Lutz's age though, so should've been retired anyway.
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Tom 5:31PM (8/29/2008)
Don't forget that GM designs, engineers and assembles all of its products (unlike WalMart, etc.) and that the U.S. is still one of GM's global hubs for product development. BTW -- The current U.S. salaried headcount is 32,000, down from 44,000 in 2000.
Products like the Volt don't engineer themselves... (If they did, there would be companies like Tesla on every street corner.)
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Eakarach 4:50AM (8/30/2008)
More to come folk!
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