DETROIT – The deadline has come and gone and the question is, did enough General Motors salaried employees take a buyout or will there be layoffs?
The deal was offered to about 18,000 eligible workers. It will take a few days for official numbers, but the rumblings inside General Motors suggest not as many workers took the offer as the company had anticipated.
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GM has a salaried workforce of about 50,000 people;Â nearly 18,000 of them qualified for the buyout offer which was six months pay and six months of health care.
GM announced that buyout offer on the same day it reported $2.5 billion in third quarter profit.
While 18,000 workers qualified for the buyout, but the target number GM was looking to shed was 7,000.
Have they hit their target? GM insiders said the answer, likely, is no. The official word from the company is that layoffs are a possibility at the beginning of the year if the company doesn't hit its cost-cutting targets.
Motivating the shed: slowing sales in the United States and China as well as a rising commodity prices including steel and aluminum.
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