Glad I don't work for GM: Happy Holidays and pink slips
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JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
News abounds in multiple sources that GM (General Motors) is about to cut approximately 30,000 jobs in an effort to "right-size" and bring costs back in line with where they need to be so that GM can become profitable again.
Were I a stockholder of GM, I might perversely be cheering this news, but since I'm not, I can and will somewhat decry these moves as being poorly timed, and cold-hearted given the timing of the announcements. I realize that GM's employees should have seen the writing on the wall, and couldn't have expected the union bargained benefits and wage package good-times to go on forever. GM's costs have been well out of line with their sales for a long time.
Had GM not been sitting on a pile of other useful business subsidiaries that they've since sold off to other companies (for example DirecTV/Hughes which was sold off to Fox/Rupert Murdoch), they might have had to hit this point some time ago. They delayed the inevitable as long as they could, but eventually things have caught up with them.
Even their big "employee discount pricing" didn't help their automotive manufacturing that much, as (check through past articles for discussion of this) they merely borrowed against their own future sales to get sales and customers in the current (at the time) quarter.
GM and their union employees (and non-union as well) have been a bloated company for a long time. Their executives, like those of many other companies in the U.S.A. have continued to draw huge salaries regardless of poor performance, and their employees get paid regardless of whether or not they produce anything, or nothing at all. There's a long history of "employee friendly" benefits such as employee training and other such non-work related costs that employees have had because of union bargained benefits in past contracts. Those costs are now coming back to haunt many of these employees who will be getting severance packages rather than continuing to draw paychecks from Mr. Goodwrench.
I wish the impacted employees well. Hopefully they've taken advantage of the offered job training and hopefully they'll be able to bank those severance benefits while they look for new work over the next several weeks and months.
Were I a stockholder of GM, I might perversely be cheering this news, but since I'm not, I can and will somewhat decry these moves as being poorly timed, and cold-hearted given the timing of the announcements. I realize that GM's employees should have seen the writing on the wall, and couldn't have expected the union bargained benefits and wage package good-times to go on forever. GM's costs have been well out of line with their sales for a long time.
Had GM not been sitting on a pile of other useful business subsidiaries that they've since sold off to other companies (for example DirecTV/Hughes which was sold off to Fox/Rupert Murdoch), they might have had to hit this point some time ago. They delayed the inevitable as long as they could, but eventually things have caught up with them.
Even their big "employee discount pricing" didn't help their automotive manufacturing that much, as (check through past articles for discussion of this) they merely borrowed against their own future sales to get sales and customers in the current (at the time) quarter.
GM and their union employees (and non-union as well) have been a bloated company for a long time. Their executives, like those of many other companies in the U.S.A. have continued to draw huge salaries regardless of poor performance, and their employees get paid regardless of whether or not they produce anything, or nothing at all. There's a long history of "employee friendly" benefits such as employee training and other such non-work related costs that employees have had because of union bargained benefits in past contracts. Those costs are now coming back to haunt many of these employees who will be getting severance packages rather than continuing to draw paychecks from Mr. Goodwrench.
I wish the impacted employees well. Hopefully they've taken advantage of the offered job training and hopefully they'll be able to bank those severance benefits while they look for new work over the next several weeks and months.
