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GM offers buyouts to ‘majority’ of U.S. salaried workers

cnbc.com

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Re: GM offers buyouts to ‘majority’ of U.S. salaried workers

#21

Post by credit_guy »

esel2k wrote: post #7

Maybe I miss the point, but why wouldn’t the ones that easily find a job (or maybe even have a next job at hand) take the payout for extra money while the ones that desperately don’t do any work or are not performing would stay? Wouldn’t this result in the wrong outcome?

The severance package is proportional with the length of employment at GM, which is highly correlated with the age. In this country you can't discriminate based on age, so this is a legal way to thin out the ranks of the older employees.

Re: GM offers buyouts to ‘majority’ of U.S. salaried workers

#22

Post by chii »

credit_guy wrote: post #21
esel2k wrote: post #7

Maybe I miss the point, but why wouldn’t the ones that easily find a job (or maybe even have a next job at hand) take the payout for extra money while the ones that desperately don’t do any work or are not performing would stay? Wouldn’t this result in the wrong outcome?

The severance package is proportional with the length of employment at GM, which is highly correlated with the age. In this country you can't discriminate based on age, so this is a legal way to thin out the ranks of the older employees.

> thin out the ranks of the older employees.

so is this desirable to the company because older aged workers aren't as productive as a younger person? I would've imagined that in most skilled trade, experience accounts for a lot.

Re: GM offers buyouts to ‘majority’ of U.S. salaried workers

#23

Post by rkangel »

credit_guy wrote: post #21
esel2k wrote: post #7

Maybe I miss the point, but why wouldn’t the ones that easily find a job (or maybe even have a next job at hand) take the payout for extra money while the ones that desperately don’t do any work or are not performing would stay? Wouldn’t this result in the wrong outcome?

The severance package is proportional with the length of employment at GM, which is highly correlated with the age. In this country you can't discriminate based on age, so this is a legal way to thin out the ranks of the older employees.

As an aside, in the UK and EU you also can't discriminate based on age, but that means that you can't do anything based on length of service. For example, it is illegal to place a job advert requiring "x years of experience in z" because that requires you to be a certain age.

Re: GM offers buyouts to ‘majority’ of U.S. salaried workers

#24

Post by chii »

Shank wrote: post #6
drbig wrote: post #2

> General Motors will offer voluntary buyouts to a “majority” of its 58,000 U.S. white-collar employees, > The buyout offer comes after the Detroit automaker said last week it would terminate about 500 salaried positions globally. How does that work? The only sensible explanations I currently see is that either there's some new technology that replaces _hundreds_ of people or that... they had _hundreds_ of people tha…

Well, some percentage of people won't accept the buyout. It's not as if it's just free money -- it's free money for the stress and anxiety associated with being jobless. I'm sure they have a good idea of the number of people that they project will leave based on this, and they can always counteroffer if it turns out that more people than they expect will quit. The upshot to this over layoffs is that people can self-s…

i wonder if these buyouts are more or less expensive than severance packages.

If you know your severance would be higher than the buyout, why would you accept? If the buyout is higher than severance, then the company is "losing" money doing the buyout isn't it? I suppose keeping good reputation/PR is worth something...

Re: GM offers buyouts to ‘majority’ of U.S. salaried workers

#25

Post by chii »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #9

I think if you were a valuable employee and didn't get a buyout offer but were hoping to leave this would be a major downer.

> but were hoping to leave this would be a major downer.

it would suck. But it also means that you are needed, and thus, would be in a position to demand a pay rise (or leave, which you were already hoping to do right?).

Re: GM offers buyouts to ‘majority’ of U.S. salaried workers

#27

Post by s3p »

chii wrote: post #22
credit_guy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The severance package is proportional with the length of employment at GM, which is highly correlated with the age. In this country you can't discriminate based on age, so this is a legal way to thin out the ranks of the older employees.

> thin out the ranks of the older employees. so is this desirable to the company because older aged workers aren't as productive as a younger person? I would've imagined that in most skilled trade, experience accounts for a lot.

Maybe. Neither you nor OP nor I know.

Re: GM offers buyouts to ‘majority’ of U.S. salaried workers

#28

Post by credit_guy »

chii wrote: post #22
credit_guy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The severance package is proportional with the length of employment at GM, which is highly correlated with the age. In this country you can't discriminate based on age, so this is a legal way to thin out the ranks of the older employees.

> thin out the ranks of the older employees. so is this desirable to the company because older aged workers aren't as productive as a younger person? I would've imagined that in most skilled trade, experience accounts for a lot.

The article states that this offer is for the white-collar employees

  General Motors will offer voluntary buyouts to a “majority” of its U.S. white-collar employees, according to a letter sent to workers Thursday from CEO Mary Barra.

Re: GM offers buyouts to ‘majority’ of U.S. salaried workers

#29

Post by dsfyu404ed »

esel2k wrote: post #7

Maybe I miss the point, but why wouldn’t the ones that easily find a job (or maybe even have a next job at hand) take the payout for extra money while the ones that desperately don’t do any work or are not performing would stay? Wouldn’t this result in the wrong outcome?

While I'm sure people playing that game are a sizeable chunk of the pie chart who will take the buyout I think that people looking to get out of their current role for an actual reason independent of "I think I can take the cash, get a new job and come out ahead financially" will make up the overwhelming majority. This is GM we're talking about, not Trendy Tech Startup #8239422834237.

Re: GM offers buyouts to ‘majority’ of U.S. salaried workers

#30

Post by inhumantsar »

drbig wrote: post #2

> General Motors will offer voluntary buyouts to a “majority” of its 58,000 U.S. white-collar employees, > The buyout offer comes after the Detroit automaker said last week it would terminate about 500 salaried positions globally. How does that work? The only sensible explanations I currently see is that either there's some new technology that replaces _hundreds_ of people or that... they had _hundreds_ of people tha…

Every large enterprise as a subset of people who spend their time pretending to work rather than actually working.

Remember that 500 out of 58,000 is only 0.9%.

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