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

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

#41

Post by SkyPuncher »

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?

Having gone through the 2008 crash in an automotive family - it can be extremely difficult to find a new job without having to relocate or take a significantly longer commute.

The physical nature of engineer and manufacturing means facilities are spread all over a metropolitan area. Particularly, manufacturing tends to be built agricultural property that's on the edge of suburbia.

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

#42

Post by SkyPuncher »

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.

Older workers tend to be more expensive because of their experience.

This is also a way to "encourage" those considering retirement to do it on your terms.

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

#43

Post by SkyPuncher »

michaelt wrote: post #8
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…

If a car company needs to cut costs they've got a variety of options. They can trim the product line-up - Wikipedia tells me Chevrolet alone has a product lineup of 10 cars, 12 crossovers/SUVs, 5 vans, 5 trucks, and 3 commercial trucks. Or they can reduce the number of marques they operate (Chevrolet is just one of seven brands) Or they can stretch out product refreshes. Maybe SUV #8 only needs a 'facelift', rather t…

While it use to be different, many of these vehicles are sharing common development platforms. Particularly, between brands, the core vehicles are shared with mostly changes to fit-and-finish and easily swappable parts (like tires, brakes, shocks, struts, etc).

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

#44

Post by SkyPuncher »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #35

I don't think people realize what a shock wave is coming for the auto industry. 1. High interest rates make cars a lot more expensive, suppressing demand. 2. The inventories on dealership lots have been rebuilt over the last 6 months, hiding a drop in consumer demand. 3. EV's take much less labor to manufacture than combustion engines. Take a look at the regularity of an EV compared to a combustion vehicle. That regu…

> 2. The inventories on dealership lots have been rebuilt over the last 6 months, hiding a drop in consumer demand.

I am still not seeing this. Many of the dealerships in my area are still putting use vehicles on prominent display to make the lots appear more full.

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

#45

Post by red-iron-pine »

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.

Lowering salaries. You're not paying Boomer rates to experience folks, you're paying Zoomer rates to noobs, and automating or offshoring the rest.

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

#46

Post by hd95489 »

pydry wrote: post #40
hd95489 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be simple just offer more to employees who score the lowest in the stacked ranking

That sounds like a recipe to get everybody performing worse.

Don’t make a habit out of it

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

#47

Post by dragonwriter »

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.

> In this country you can't discriminate based on age

You can’t legally discriminate against people because of age over 40; otherwise age discrimination is legal.

Also, most forms of illegal discrimination are routine, much of the work of HR and management training in regard to discrimination exists to make sure that hiring managers know what domcumentation needs to reflect irrespective of the true basis of personnel decisions so that illegal discrimination is difficult to prove (that’s not how it is framed, of course, because the training itself is part of the record.)

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

#48

Post by jalk »

rkangel wrote: post #23
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.

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.

Perhaps not with a specific number of years, but you are certainly not obliged to consider every recent graduate who applies for your senior position

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

#49

Post by tnel77 »

hd95489 wrote: post #36
larrymyers wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not missing the point, though maybe it won't go as badly for a older company like GM. I got to witness this failed strategy first hand at AOL around 2010. The people who opted into the VSP were the ones who could easily find another job, and were happy to take the money. Some of them even came right back in a consulting role after a 2 month cooling off period. The people who never even considered the offer wer…

If your are a year from retirement that’s about the only reason

I worked at a GM sized company right out of college and they did a voluntary early retirement thing like this. It was one week’s salary for every year of service with the company plus they’d pay your health insurance premiums for the rest of the calendar year.

They had a lot of people who planned to retire in 1-3 years take that offer and I knew quite a few who came back within a couple of months for a higher salary than they previously had.

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

#50

Post by red-iron-pine »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #35

I don't think people realize what a shock wave is coming for the auto industry. 1. High interest rates make cars a lot more expensive, suppressing demand. 2. The inventories on dealership lots have been rebuilt over the last 6 months, hiding a drop in consumer demand. 3. EV's take much less labor to manufacture than combustion engines. Take a look at the regularity of an EV compared to a combustion vehicle. That regu…

> 10. HN is highly skeptical about autonomous driving, but if it does happen it will have a significant unpredictable change on the market.

I'm deeply skeptical about autonomous railroads, let alone cars. And those are much simpler problems to fix -- that haven't.

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