General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson revealed earlier this month that the Detroit automaker was planning to thin its white collar ranks by 20 percent by year’s end, but a new report reveals the job cut will be made by the end of October.
GM will make the 4,000 or so job cuts through layoffs and terminations. “This is what we’ve talked about — a leaner organization with fewer levels of management,” GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson told Automotive News. “You start to see what the new organization will look like.” GM informed its employees of the plan on Wednesday.
In tandem with a plan to reduce its executive ranks by 34 percent, GM will shed about 6,100 salaried jobs this year, bringing white collar employment down to 23,500. In contrast, GM employed more than 49,000 white collar workers in 2000.
Those salaried workers affect by the cuts will have until the end of August to accept a six month severance package.
Although GM will take a significant chunk out of its white collar work force, it pales in comparison to the job losses at the automaker’s factories. In the last three years, GM has reduced its blue collar workforce by 60,500 – representing more than half of its total blue collar workforce.
