Troubled US automaker General Motors is planning to cut white-collar jobs in the United States because of rising financial problems, a source close to the situation said Thursday.

The source confirmed a letter published in the online The Wall Street Journal on Thursday from GM chief executive Rick Wagoner and chief operating officer Fritz Henderson.

Addressed to US-based GM executives, the letter said its voluntary employee buyout program to cut costs was incapable of countering the negative fallout from the global financial crisis on the North American and western European markets.

“The global economic outlook remains very concerning. As a result, actions are being taken throughout GM’s global operations to address our increasing need to conserve cash,” wrote Wagoner and Henderson.

“Here in the US, we need to reduce our salaried and contract workforce by even more than we anticipated. In this regard, we expect to initiate involuntary separations in some areas of the business, late this year and early in 2009.”

The letter did not say how many jobs would be eliminated.
via afp

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Anything else. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.