GM having employees take more vacations to cut costs

There are worse things than being forced to take vacation days -- like your employer going belly-up -- so General Motors is asking the tens of thousands of workers at its Vehicle Engineering Center and the Milford and Mesa Proving Grounds to stay home on December 22nd and 23rd. Factories won't plan any additional idle days in December, but the Engineering Center alone employs more than 16,000 people, so significant savings can be realized from those two additional days of quiet time. Just shutting out the lights and turning the heat back to 55 degrees, even in such large facilities, isn't going to turn GM around in a singular motion, but it's a low-impact way to conserve scarce money. It's also probably a lot easier to get the engineers to take time off than it is to fight with the unions at each assembly plant. One thing that would stick in our craw: if you've already used up all your vaca, you'll have to borrow from next year's time. No free days for you, even as we slide toward the abyss!

[Source: Automotive News - sub req]