GM heading for Black Tuesday next week?

There seems to be a growing groundswell of rumors centering around a possible restructuring of GM's worldwide engineering staff. Reuters reports GM Europe as denying Thursday that it would announce engineering job reductions next week, apparently responding to this article in the Detroit Free Press, which forecasts a "Black Tuesday" next week for GM engineers in its North American operations.

According to the Free Press article, engineers at the GM's Tech Center in Warren, Michigan, believe that their jobs will be cut next Tuesday, and the evidence is pretty clear that something's going on. An unnamed GM executive calls it a "right-sizing" of engineering groups in both the U.S. and Europe.

Industry insider Peter DeLorenzo reports that engineering staff reductions will impact GM's central engineering operations in Warren, Milford and Pontiac, Michigan. DeLorenzo calls the layoffs "inevitable," as GM evolves from a predominantly U.S.-centric company to a more global operation.

[Sources: Reuters, The Detroit Free Press, AutoExtremist.com]