General Motors to Offer Another Round of Early Retirement Offers to U.S. Workers Next Year

DETROIT December 22, 2004; The AOP reported that General Motors Corp. plans to offer another round of early retirement offers and buyout packages to U.S. salaried workers early next year, the company said Wednesday.

GM, the world's largest automaker, declined to say how many of its roughly 38,000 U.S. salaried employees would receive the offers.

"For the past several years GM has been aligning its work force with its business needs, and 2005 will be no different," GM spokesman Robert Herta said.

GM, like some other automakers and suppliers, has been shrinking its work force in recent years in the face of declining market share, weak automotive profits and mounting health care and pension costs.

DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group plans to exercise a contract provision to reduce skilled trades workers at some plants. Troy-based Delphi Corp., the world's biggest auto parts supplier, has reduced its earnings forecasts and is cutting about 8,500 jobs next year. Visteon Corp. has said it will offer buyouts to salaried employees.

For GM, the buyout offers are part of a multipronged effort to cut costs throughout its organization. In the United States, GM plans to close its assembly plant in Baltimore by next summer, end production at its assembly plant in Linden, N.J., early next year and cut a shift at the Pontiac truck assembly plant.

The offers going out to white-collar workers will be voluntary. In recent years, GM has exceeded internal job-reduction goals.

In 2001 and 2002, it targeted a 10 percent reduction in white-collar ranks, and a 3 to 7 percent cut in 2003. As a result, GM has slimmed its U.S. salaried work force from 44,000 in 2000 to about 38,000.