Not mundane or pointless, particularly to those threatened with unemployment, but I didn’t know where else to put this. The cuts will take place through 2008 and will be accompanied by more factory closures, according to the text of Chief Executive Rick Wagoner’s speech for today’s annual meeting. The job losses equate to almost 8% of the company’s workforce.
I can only hope this type of stuff will empower corporate America to help our elected officials find the backbone and testicles/ovaries needed take on the entrenched interestes and fix the health care system in this country.
Oh man, fodder for another Michael Moore movie.
I wish they’s just quit hemming and hawing and declare bankruptcy. That company need to be either completely overhauled, or put out of it’s mercy. Bankruptcy will give an impetus to clear out the dead wood and the idiots on top and take a risk to build a better company. Hey GM?! Have you heard of friggen hybrids! There’s waiting lists for them all over the country! What have you got to show for future planning beyond a presidential pipe dream of hydrogen vehicles?
Speaking of the Health Care system and Michael Moore movies, the health care system and pharmaceutical industry is his next target in Sicko.
Speaking of layoffs the pharmaceutical company I work for is going to start implementing it’s latest ‘initiative’ (IOW layoffs) within the next month or so. 
So much for that “employee discount” thing they’re advertising right now. I saw the ad and thought “You can get the same discount the empoyees get because they’re eliminating the employee discount!”
Turns out they just eliminate the employees. Is it at least job cuts by attrition? (ie: when people retire or otherwise leave normally, the jobs are not re-staffed.)
Yeah that will happen.
I think this has less to do with health care costs than the number of UAW retirees in the pension plan. GM currently has about 2.5 UAW retirees in the pension fund for each active worker. (Both Ford & DX have a ratio nearer 1:1) And it didn’t help when GM spun off Dephi, but kept the retirees and their pension costs.
It may also have something to do with the quality and type of cars they make.
I just read an interesting article here. It turns out that GM has tons of unused capacity; they could make several million more cars a year, if there was a market for them. The 25,000 jobs being cut are mostly deadwood. Also, it seems likely that many of the job cuts will be from attrition.
In any event, GM’s stock is up 1% today, so investors seem to think it’s a good move.
Yeah, this article says:
It’s pretty depressing when 25,000 job losses is seen as welcome news by anyone.