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GM tries driving off 74,000 workers
Posted by Fired Fred on February 12, 2008 4:15 PM
GM lost $39 billion dollars last year, mostly thanks to a big tax asset writeoff, whatever that means. They'll try to make that up by waving a big severance carrot in front of the workers they have today.
If the workers take the bait, they can hire younger, cheaper people to replace them...
GM is offering hourly employees incentives of $45,000 for production workers and $62,500 for skilled trades workers in exchange for an agreement to retire early. About 46,000 of GM's 74,000 UAW-represented workers have the required 26 years of service and are eligible for early retirement.Take the deal, and GM gets to ditch pension and health benefits for those workers. The next people to fill those jobs will do so for half the pay the older workers got, $14 an hour instead of $28.
The remaining will be offered between $70,000 and $140,000, depending on length of service, to take a buyout.
GM and the unions managed to make this mess, and look what's going to happen. Instead of being paid enough to buy a house, line workers will be paid enough to buy newspapers that tell them what kind of house Bob Lutz can afford.