GM offers buyouts to salaried staff
About 58,000 U.S. workers eligible as automaker cuts costs
DETROIT — General Motors said it’s offering voluntary buyouts to salaried staff as part of a plan announced in January to cut $2 billion in annual costs.
The Detroit automaker will offer the employees lump-sum payments and other compensation based on tenure, according to a regulatory filing Thursday. The move is designed to “accelerate the normal attrition process and the resulting cost savings,” according to GM.
The majority of its salaried workforce in the United States is eligible for the program, the automaker said. GM has about 58,000 salaried staff members based in the U.S. Eligible employees must sign up by March 24.
“This voluntary program offers eligible employees an opportunity to make a career change or retire earlier,” GM spokesperson David Barnas said in a statement. “Employees are strongly encouraged to consider the program. By permanently bringing down structured costs, we can improve vehicle profitability and remain nimble in an increasingly competitive market.”
Also part of the cost-cutting measures, GM said in late February that it was cutting about 500 executive-level and salaried jobs. The news came a month after CEO Mary Barra said the company was “not planning layoffs.”
“I do want to be clear that we’re not planning layoffs,” Barra said at the time. “We are limiting our hiring to only the most strategically important roles, and we’ll use attrition to help manage overall headcount.”
Rival Ford has been cutting thousands of jobs across the U.S. and Europe in recent months, and CEO Jim Farley has hinted that more may be coming.
Stellantis idled an assembly plant in Belvidere, Ill., with CEO Carlos Tavares partly blaming the investment needed to electrify the company’s fleet.