February 15, 2008 (LPAC)--General Motors is offering a new round of employee buyouts, and unlike the one in 2006 that was aimed purely at shrinking GM's workforce, this time the plan is focused on "opening up jobs" so that the company can greatly expand hiring workers at a much lower pay scale, which it is allowed under the four-year contract sold-out by the UAW last fall.

UAW head Ron Gettelfinger expects 15,000 to 20,000 workers to leave GM under the buyout, after which the company would hire 16,000 workers into "noncore jobs" at wages of $14 to $16 an hour, compared to $28 an hour that an assembler makes now. This will "save" GM just nearly $100,000 a year per worker, which is nonetheless peanuts compared to the $38.7 billion GM lost last year. If 15,000 workers left in this buyout round, that would be about 20% of the 74,000 UAW-represented workers who remain at GM. The monetary offer is now larger than the first round, and Gettelfinger said "I'm sure there will be a lot of interest."

Ford also is offering workers a general buyout from Feb. 18 to March 17. The company expect to get rid of 8,000 workers, out of the 57,900 hourly workers in the Ford operations and 5,200 in its subsidiary the Automotive Components Holdings (ACH, founded as a temporary unit to sell of dispose of facilities owned by Ford's spinoff, Visteon Corp.). Here, the move consists in leaving room to ACH workers to go back into Ford when all the ACH plants are sold or spun off this year, according to Joseph Hinrichs, Ford vice-president for global manufacturing.