General Motors says it’s working to “treat our employees with the highest
respect” as it slashes thousands of jobs.
On Monday, the company began handing out pink slips to salaried staffers.
Nearly 4,300 employees will receive termination notices this week.
The layoffs are part of a cost-cutting plan that
General Motors announced in November
. By the end of 2019, the carmaker said its ending production at five
plants in North America and cutting 14,700 jobs.
Business Today
reported
:
Two people briefed on the cuts said GM is cutting hundreds of jobs at
its information technology centres in Texas, Georgia, Arizona and
Michigan and more than 1,000 jobs at its Warren, Michigan Tech Center.
GM is filing new required mass layoff notices with state agencies and
disclosed the cuts to lawmakers.
Detroit Free Press
reported
:
Some employees inside GM's Detroit headquarters received an email
Monday morning from CFO Dhivya Suryadevara telling them "restructuring
activities" were beginning and saying employees will be informed by
their team leaders when the cuts are complete.
"As you hear about employees that are impacted, please be mindful and
respect their feelings. People will respond differently, so always take
your cue from them," she wrote.
"Bear in mind that GM has adapted lessons from our past and we’ve
thought about the individual throughout this transition. We want to
preserve dignity to all employees by living our values and behaviors.
We recognize that every individual will respond differently, and we
will respect and acknowledge those differences."
This week’s layoffs are roughly half the job cuts that GM plans to make by
the end of February.
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The Detroit News
reported
:
GM largely will complete an ongoing effort to cut some 8,000 salaried
and contract jobs this month, the source said. As part of its
restructuring, the automaker also is cutting its global executive
workforce by 25 percent, but it's unclear where that effort stands.
"We are not confirming timing," GM said in a statement to The News.
"Our employees are our priority, and we will communicate with them
first."
Prior to moving to involuntary separations, GM offered buyouts to
18,000 employees on Halloween last year. In an internal memo obtained
by The News after the deadline to accept buyouts, CEO Mary Barra said
roughly 2,250 employees requested to take the voluntary separation
offer. Reductions to GM's contract workforce were largely completed
last year with some 1,500 workers let go.
Though the carmaker said its employees are its “priority,” the voluntary
buyouts the company offered to staff members weren’t enough to stop this
week’s terminations.
NBC News reported
:
Prior to announcing the cuts, GM had hoped to reduce its workforce
through voluntary buyouts offered to 17,700 employees, but the
acceptance rate initially was low. Two separate sources told NBC News
that the number of workers who have negotiated separation agreements
has escalated in recent weeks, though GM still needs to hand out pink
slips to about 4,000 employees next week to meet its target.
The cutbacks will, overall, save the company about $3 billion by the
end of this year, despite the cost of the buyouts, and a total of $6
billion by the end of 2020.
The layoffs are rolling out amid protests by employees and their unions.
Despite receiving a cease-and-desist letter from General Motors’ legal
team, Canadian union Unifor released the following ad during Super Bowl
LIII:
After the ad aired,
GM issued the following statement to Fast Company
:
This is the implementation of the salaried actions announced late last
year. These actions are necessary to secure the future of the company,
including preserving thousands of jobs in the U.S. and globally. We are
taking action now while the overall economy and job market are strong,
increasing the ability of impacted employees to continue to advance in
their careers, should they choose to do so.
Our focus now is on working with each individual employee on providing
severance packages and transition support through job placement
services.
General Motors’ message of focusing on the individual employee carried
through to an internal memo the company sent to its workforce on
Monday.
Detroit Free Press
reported:
One of the memos obtained by the Free Press read: "Today we continue
our restructuring activities, including employee separations, across
North American locations. Please be assured that every effort has been
made to treat our employees with the highest respect. We have thought
through personal and professional needs and will provide our employees
choices for how the process will work best for them."
It goes on to say that, "We all manage stress and emotion differently,
and safety is a key element of our culture. As you know from your GM
safety training if you see or hear something that may impact employee
safety, please speak up."
(Image
via
)