February 11th, 2009 by Reed Allmand 
source: Star Telegram
General Motors Corp. (GM) announced that it will implement another 10,000 salaried job losses this year in efforts to save the company from bankruptcy and meet government requirements for viability. The Detroit-based automaker’s job losses will slash the company’s U.S.-based white-collar workers by 12 percent. Most of the cuts will take place by May 2009. But this isn’t the first round of job losses GM has experienced, since 2000 job losses at GM have slashed their salaried work force by 33 percent from a high of 44,000 people and the number of hourly workers has plunged by more than half – to about 63,700 people. The job losses come as bad news to all workers at GM; but those reaching retirement age will suffer the most.
The article said:
The company’s statement said there would be no buyout or early retirement packages as GM had offered in the past, but laid-off employees will get severance pay, benefit contributions and other assistance.
For those unlucky laid off workers who are nearing retirement, what will happen to them? And wasn’t the automaker bailout intended to save thousands of American jobs not cause them? Yes, we forgot about that. So let’s get this right, GM has billions of dollars given to them by American taxpayers; but now thousands of those same taxpayers will be out of work in order to meet the requirements of the very bailout that was intended to protect them. Those GM workers experiencing job losses will still have bills to pay. The result? We can expect to see sharp increases in foreclosures and bankruptcies in areas hardest hit by the GM job losses. How effective was the bailout? Maybe just effective enough to save GM’s bottom-line–or not; but definitely not enough to save American jobs.
About Reed Allmand
Allmand's vision is rooted in his own financially precarious childhood in Abilene "My father always had difficulty holding a job and supporting our family, so after my parents divorced when I was 12, my sister and I got jobs to help make ends meet," he recalls. "I remember what it felt like as a child to worry that our car would be repossessed or home foreclosed on."
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