Autoblog

Let's get the hard numbers out of the way. Today General Motors revealed that excluding special items, it posted a net loss of $23 million in 2007. Add in some funky deferred tax asset charge, and the automaker's net loss last year rises to $38.3 billion. Aside from that, we're interested in how GM fared in the business of selling cars and trucks around the world last year. In 2007, the automaker earned $553 million before taxes selling vehicles globally, compared to losing $339 million in 2006. Worldwide vehicles sales increased 3% to 9.4 million vehicles last year, but the North American market was no help, losing $1.5 billion before taxes.

Numbers aside, GM also had some big news today in the form of new buyouts for its entire union workforce that's some 74,000 strong. Similar to the recent round of new buyouts offered by Ford and Chrysler to their union workers, the new arrangement is more generous to workers than what was offered back in 2006. GM hasn't said how many workers it will let go this time, but because of its new contract with the UAW, the automaker will be allowed to replace some of those workers with new hires at a reduced compensation rate of around $14/hour.

Follow the jump for nitty gritty details on both GM's posted loss for 2007 and the new UAW buyouts.

[Source: GM]