GM Says 5K Workers Are Leaving Voluntarily

Instead of "layoffs" and "buyouts," General Motors likes to use the terms "involuntary separations" and "voluntary separations"—and it says it has largely avoided the former by getting 5,000 workers to accept the latter. CFO Paul Jacobson said Tuesday that around 5,000 people had signed up for a voluntary separation program announced last month, which he said was "about in line with our expectations," the Detroit News reports. The automaker currently has around 58,000 salaried employees in the US. Eligible employees who signed up for voluntary separation will leave the firm on June 30 this year.

GM says workers were given two weeks to decide whether to opt in to the program, which was offered to all salaried employees who would have been with the company for five years as of June 30, Quartz reports. The employees were offered incentives including health care and severance of one month's pay for every year they had been with the company, to a maximum of 12 months. Jacobson said the program, which was part of a plan to cut $2 billion in costs, was "a tool to get us to really accelerate the attrition curve." The company laid off 500 workers in February, but CEO Mary Barra said Tuesday that more layoffs are now unlikely. (More General Motors stories.)