GM to start axing 4,000 workers today

It will indeed be a Black Monday for thousands of North American GM employees.

General Motors is expected to begin laying off more than 4,000 salaried employees Monday morning — part of the Big Three automaker’s ongoing restructuring efforts.

As first reported this weekend by The Detroit News, sources within the company state the job cuts — reportedly expected to climb to 6,000 by the spring — are part of efforts to save the company $2.5 Billion this year. That plan includes shuttering the GM plant in Oshawa and four others across North America.

These cuts come after lukewarm interest in the automaker’s voluntary buyout packages, an effort to reduce its white-collar salaried and contracted employees by 15%.

Other plants slated to close include Michigan’s DetroitHamtramck Assembly, Lordstown in Ohio, and transmission plants in the Detroit suburb of Warren, and in Baltimore, Md.

As of Sunday afternoon, it was unclear which jobs or departments would be affected by the expected layoffs, or if salaried workers in the remaining Ontario GM plants — CAMI Automotive in Ingersoll and the St. Catharines Propulsion Plant — would be impacted.

General Motors is also undertaking a 25% reduction in its executive workforce worldwide.

A statement from GM Canada to the Toronto Sun stated reductions in salaried workers were announced as part of their Nov. 26 restructuring plans, and that these layoffs would begin in the first quarter of 2019.

The statement also said the layoffs would have “minimal impact in Canada.”

Unifor Canada confirmed the layoffs would be confined to salaried and contract workers only, and not impact its members.