GM Buying Out Employees To Hire Cheaper Workers in China
General Motors Corporation has announced that they will be offering buyouts and early retirements to all of their 74,000 hourly workers in the United States who are members of the United Auto Workers union. Is this a good idea, or a very bad one? While it will increase profit for a great American auto manufacturer, it also leaves us wondering if: more of the jobs will be sent overseas; working for GM will no longer be an enviable position; the Union will die off.
The deal does reportedly come with more favorable terms than the 2006 offer that General Motors extended to service and parts workers in 2006. More terms of the buyout are here. We have to ask GM employees to respond here, because we’re clueless on this one. When we posted this article asking the FedEx to support unions, many FedEx workers weighed in that it was possibly not such a good idea (though others said direly needed).
GM hasn’t had the best history with union workers recently, though, and in September 2007 the UAW famously went on strike for the first time in 37 years. It’s also pretty hard to comprehend that they cannot afford to pay our American workers, but they can invest millions in a research center in Shanghai, China.