GM May Need More U.S. Job Cuts as Buyouts Fall Short

Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Co.may have to cut more U.S. hourly jobs after an offer of buyouts and early retirements fell about 7,500 workers short of the reorganized automaker’s target.

The possibility of layoffs was disclosed today by Sherrie Childers Arb, a spokeswoman, in an interview after GM announced that more than 6,000 United Auto Workers members, or 11 percent of the hourly workforce, left the company on Aug. 1.

GM’s latest voluntary exits pushed the total of U.S. hourly workers leaving through buyouts and retirement offers to about 66,000 since 2006. The biggest domestic automaker is shrinking its workforce to match reductions including the shutdown of 14 U.S. plants and 3 warehouses by the end of 2011.

“It’s not surprising they didn’t reach their goal,” said Dennis Virag, president of Automotive Consulting Group Inc. in Ann Arbor, Michigan. With U.S. unemployment at 9.5 percent in June, “workers are more reluctant to accept a buyout because the prospects for other employment are more challenging.”

GM aims to eliminate 13,500 hourly positions in 2009, trimming that payroll to about 40,500 jobs, said Tom Wilkinson, a spokesman. Detroit-based GM began the year with about 61,000 U.S. hourly jobs and cut that total to about 54,000 at the end of April with buyouts and early retirements.

Moving Jobs

Any layoffs probably wouldn’t total 7,500, Childers Arb said. Some employees are likely to leave on their own or retire rather than relocate once GM shuffles work among its facilities, dropping jobs in some locations while keeping others, she said. GM hasn’t said where the job cuts will take place.

Hourly workers who took the buyout and retirement offers are receiving cash payments of $20,000 to $115,000 as well as $25,000 vehicle vouchers.

Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson is also paring the U.S. salaried workforce and chopping its eight domestic brands in half.

GM left a government-backed bankruptcy on July 10 as a new company whose largest shareholder is the U.S. Treasury. Losses at predecessor General Motors Corp. totaled $88 billion since the company last posted an annual profit in 2004.

To contact the reporter on this story: Katie Merx - in Southfield, Michigan, at kmerx@bloomberg.net

Source: Bloomberg.com

Posted: Daily Thought Pad

WARNING - DO NOT LOG ON TO CARS.GOV - Updated

WARNING - DO NOT LOG ON TO CARS.GOV - If you log on to cars.gov and accept the privacy terms, the government now has the right to take all the information on your computer. That will include all your personal information, bank records, transactions, web site log ins, EVERYTHING ON YOUR COMPUTER.

I am not saying the government will take your personal information. I am telling you that accepting the terms will allow them to.

A sign welcoming consumers to participate in the "Cash for Clunkers" program is posted outside the Pride Chevrolet dealership in Lynn, Mass., Friday, July 31, 2009. After hours of confusion about whether the Cash for Clunkers program had run out of money, it was game on again Friday for car dealers, TV stations and newspapers, who had worried that one of the few bright spots for their industries would end after just one week.

Also, cars cannot be re-sold. They must be destroyed, and although parts can be recovered, no engines or drive trains; these will be sold to China, where they can keep polluting. (Man-made 'global' warming being used as one main reason for program... Can someone say "global... same globe?!?")

Side effect: If you choose to keep and old car, getting parts will become come exceedingly more difficult and more expensive, forcing you to buy one of the new Government Motor cars...

Ask Marion~

Chrysler's 'hit list' targets GOP donors

OBAMANOMICS
Chrysler's 'hit list' targets GOP donors:  Dealers who give to Republicans much more likely to be shuttered

Does this both scare and make anyone else’s skin crawl??

As part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Chrysler is terminating one-fourth of its franchises – but some say its catalog of doomed dealerships looks more like a hit list that specifically seeks to put Republican donors out of business.

Chrysler will now be eligible for up to $8 billion in taxpayer-funded federal aid. The federal government has already provided $8.58 billion to Chrysler and Chrysler Holding between the months of January and May of this year. The Treasury also loaned $1.5 billion to the automaker's lending arm in January.

President Obama has said the bankruptcy will give the company "a new lease on life," after his administration spearheaded a plan requiring the company sell to Italian automaker Fiat. Chrysler's stronger operations will be owned by Fiat, labor and the U.S. and Canadian governments. The sale could close as early as this Friday.

Obama said the bankruptcy would be a "quick" and "efficient" step toward Chrysler's "survival."

"The necessary steps have been taken to give one of America's most storied automakers, Chrysler, a new lease on life," Obama said. "This is not a sign of weakness."

But WND reviewed the list of 789 closing franchises and databases of political donors and found that of dealership majority owners making contributions in the November 2008 election, less than 10 percent gifted to Democrats while 90 percent gave substantial sums to Republican candidates.

The listed franchise owners contributed at least $450,000 to Republican presidential candidates and the GOP, while only $7,970 was donated to Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign and $2,200 was given to Sen. John Edwards' campaign.

Obama received a combined total of only $450 in donations – $250 from dealer Jane Baldock in Wenatchee, Wash., and $200 from Waco, Texas, dealer Jeffrey Hunter.

Why does Obama think he's "the One"? Find out by reading the special Whistleblower issue: "Narcissist in chief"!

Many of the majority owners who donated to Republican campaigns last year also contributed additional thousands to George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2004 and to help elect GOP representatives.

Find out which GOP donors are getting Chrysler's ax. A list is available here.

Rep. Vernon Buchanan, R-Fla.

The first dealership on Chrysler's list of facilities marked for termination by June 9 is located in Venice, Fla., and belongs to Republican Rep. Vernon G. Buchanan.

Buchanan gave $2,300 to John McCain in 2008 and has contributed nearly $150,000 to GOP candidates and organizations since 2007. He discovered that his location was scheduled for closure when he crossed paths with Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich.

According to the Associated Press, Miller told Buchanan, "I heard you're going to lose your Dodge franchise."

"Oh, really?" Buchanan said in a state of surprise.

The dealership's operating partner, Shelby Curtsinger, said he was astonished by Chrysler's decision because the location has been profitable – selling more than twice the stock of an average Chrysler dealership every year.

Houston dealer Robert Archer is one of 330 people contesting Chrysler's decision to close their locations. He donated $1,000 to National Republican Congressional Committee and $500 to Americans for a Republican Majority.

Archer told the New York Times he ordered 700 new vehicles and $1.7 million in new parts after Chrysler told him he could survive unless he stocked more cars. He sacrificed his profits to help the company survive.

Now he is set to lose his franchise.

Other GOP contributors include Michael Maroone, a dealer in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He gave $20,000 to the Florida Republican Party, $12,700 to the Republican National Committee and $2,300 to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Likewise, Menomonee Falls, Wis., dealer Russ Darrow and his family gave $19,000 to the Republican National Committee, $6,029 to the Wisconsin Republican Party, $2,300 to John McCain and $1,000 to Rudy Giuliani. Bedford, Texas, dealer Eric Grubbs gifted $11,500 to Mike Huckabee, $4,600 to Rudy Giuliani, $6,500 to Texas Republican Congressional Committee, $1,085 to the RNC and $500 to National Republican Congressional Committee. Midlothian, Va., dealer Max Pearson donated $18,000 to National Republican Senatorial Committee, $6,900 to the RNC, $6,900 to John McCain, $3,600 to Virginia Republican Party and $1,000 to National Republican Congressional Committee.

The list continues with more than 60 political donors who are scheduled to lose their franchises – many of whom gave thousands of dollars to Republican candidates – and only seven dealers who contributed a total of less than $12,000 to the Democratic Party and its candidates.

Blogger Doug Ross reviewed patterns on the closure list and noticed the unmistakable trend.

"I took all dealer owners whose names appeared more than once on the list," he wrote. "And, of those who contributed to political campaigns, every single one had donated almost exclusively to GOP candidates."

With 2,392 Chrysler dealerships remaining, some bloggers claim to have already begun the exhaustive process of checking each majority owner to determine whether Chrysler has been more merciful toward those who donate to Democrats while simultaneously giving walking papers to Republican contributors.

Chrysler has not responded to WND's requests for comment. The company claims it evaluated the dealerships based on raw sales volume, location, market, history of experience and market share. According to the company's bankruptcy court filing, the 789 dealerships listed for closure "lack the operational, market, facility and linemaker characteristics necessary to best contribute to the ongoing dealer network under current or future ownership."

Dealer Jim Anderer told Fox News' Neil Cavuto he doesn't understand why Chrysler is shutting down his Long Island dealership because he claims his dealership is quite profitable – with sales volume ranking in the top 2 percent.

Asked why he believes the company targeted him, Anderer said, "They won't tell us. They seem to be running for cover right now because they won't give us a solid explanation. They come up with all these reasons, but none of them seem to make sense."

He continued, "This is insanity. The government is stealing my business. And they're telling me there's nothing I can do about it."

Anderer said Chrysler claims it wants to combine its stores or that dealers cost the manufacturer money to stay in business.

"In the dealers that they cut, there seems to be no cohesive way that they did it," he said. "There was no process that you could put your finger on and say, 'Hey, we cut 25 percent of the lowest performing dealers.' They didn't do that. Nobody will give us a real clear explanation of the formula that they came up with."

An anonymous employee affected by the dealership closings blogged at Cars.com:

Obama visits Chrysler plant in Michigan one year before bankruptcy (photo: Barack Obama campaign)

"This isn't about business. It's about politics and control. My dealership is in the top 125 out of the 3,500-plus dealerships nationwide ... yet we are on the list. We are not small nor are we rural. We are in a large major metropolitan area. Our new vehicle inventory alone is well over $4.0 million. Is that small?"

The employee continued, "This is so much more than 'just business.' This is about control and power by our present administration in Washington. An administration that will stop at nothing to bring complete socialism to this once great country. Wake up people or get in line now to 'drink the Kool-Aid.'"

Chrysler's bankruptcy court review process began May 14 and is scheduled to end by June 9. According to a May 14 Chrysler memo, dealers learned of their fate via UPS letters arriving earlier this month. A Senate committee is conducting hearings this week as dealers file their requests to block their termination.

George C. Joseph, owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu in Melbourne Fla., has sent out his plea to several online media organizations, including WND.

Joseph said his family paid for his franchise 35 years ago and employs more than 50 people. The company is active in the community and the local chamber of commerce, and he claims it is financially profitable.

"On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them," Joseph wrote. "My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars. This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009."

He said that without the franchise his family can no longer sell Dodge inventory as "new" or conduct any service warranty work. Joseph wrote that his parts inventory – worth $300,000 – is now practically worthless because Chrysler will not be required to buy vehicles, tools or parts from terminated dealers under bankruptcy rules.

To make matters worse, Joseph said Chrysler recently required his facility to be renovated, requiring a multi-million dollar debt in the form of a mortgage.

"This is a private business, not a government entity," he wrote. "This is beyond imagination! My business is being stolen from me through no fault of our own. We did nothing wrong."

Joseph continued, "This atrocity will most likely force my family into bankruptcy. This will cause our 50+ employees to be unemployed. How will they provide for their families? … How in the United States of America can this happen?"

By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Related Articles:

• U.S. Likely Taking Majority Ownership of GM
  
• Car Designer In Chief 
  
• Obama Auto Plan Links Auto Emissions and Mileage Standards  
  
• California Mess is a Microcosm of What's in Store for the Rest of Us 
• A look at the protected Chrysler dealerships

Car Designer In Chief

WASHINGTON -- The Constitution enumerates three requirements of those who would be president (they must be natural-born citizens, at least 35 and a resident within the country for 14 years) and now the government's thrashing about in the economy imposes a fourth: Presidents must be able to speak pluperfect nonsense with a straight face, lest the country understand what the government is doing. Obfuscation serves political salvation when what the government is doing includes promising that if Chrysler will sell itself to Fiat, U.S. taxpayers will lend that Italian firm $6 billion. (Will someone please explain to me how we are saving the U.S. auto industry by having Chrysler sell itself Fiat and then lending Fiat $6billion???  Why aren't we retaining Chrysler as a U.S. company, help them find, not appoint, new innovative management and then lend them another $6 billion of U.S. taxpayer money, if we insist on going on this auto bailout route?)

Barack Obama displayed reality-denying virtuosity last week when, announcing the cashiering of General Motors' CEO, and naming his replacement, and as the government was prompting selection of a new majority of GM's board of directors, and as the government announced the next deadline for GM to submit a more satisfactory viability plan than it submitted at the last faux deadline, and as the government kept the billions flowing to tide GM over until, well, whenever, the president said: "The United States government has no interest in running GM."

Actually, his administration prefers to do that rather than allow bankruptcy to infuriate the United Auto Workers union, which was pre-emptively grateful to Obama's administration with lavish contributions to candidate Obama. The president supposedly showed "toughness" in sacking a conspicuous member of a particularly unpopular little cohort, CEOs of big corporations. He will need more grit if, as his administration hints, this time it is serious, that its patience is wearing thin, that someday GM could face "controlled" or "prepackaged" or "surgical" bankruptcy. One suspects that those adjectives intimate that it will be faux bankruptcy, gentle in dealing with the UAW.

Last November, five months and $17.4 billion in auto bailouts ago, this column noted: "Some opponents of bankruptcy say: GM must not be allowed to fail before it perfects batteries for its electric-powered Volt, which supposedly is a key to the company's resurrection. This vehicle was concocted to serve GM's prolonged attempt to ingratiate itself with the few hundred environmentally obsessed automotive engineers in Congress. They have already voted tax credits of up to $7,500 for purchasers of such cars -- bribes that reveal doubts about consumer enthusiasm for them at a price that would reflect cost."

In December, GM, by then a mendicant groveling before its congressional masters, ran a full-page newspaper ad apologizing for having "disappointed" everyone, vowing to stop selling so many "pickups and SUVs" (which were 11 of GM's 20 most profitable products in 2008), and promising "revolutionary new products like the Chevrolet Volt." Another ad, which appeared before December and is still running, features a car attached to an electric cord, and says the Volt amounts to "reinventing the automobile."

Last week, in an unenthralled summary of GM's "viability" plan, Obama's administration said: "GM earns a large share of its profits from high-margin trucks and SUVs, which are vulnerable to a continuing shift in consumer preference to smaller vehicles. Additionally, while the Chevy Volt holds promise, it will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short term."

The stunning shift in consumer preferences that should make the White House's freshly minted auto experts feel vulnerable has been reported under headlines such as "Like a Rock: Hybrid Car Sales Plummet" (Wall Street Journal, Dec. 9) and "Hybrid Car Sales Go from 60 to 0 at Breakneck Speed" (Los Angeles Times, March 17). Absent $4 gasoline, customers, those nuisances with their insufferable preferences, do not want the vehicles the politicians want them to want, even with manufacturers now offering large rebates and other incentives.

The two best-selling vehicles in America this year are large pickup trucks (Ford F-Series and Chevy Silverado). In February, Toyota sold 13,600 Tundra and Tacoma pickups and 7,232 Priuses. It sells the Prius at a loss, which it can afford to do because it makes pots of money selling pickups. Has the Car Designer in Chief, aka the president, considered the possibility that what he calls "the cars of tomorrow" will forever be that?

His administration cannot be faulted for failing to do well what cannot be done well -- industrial policy, wherein the political class, with negligible experience in commerce, flounders. The administration can, however, be faulted for trying. The government's wallow in the automobile industry, under this and the previous administration, merits a hockey coach's evaluation of his team: "Everyday you guys look worse and worse. And today you played like tomorrow."

 By George Will, a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner whose columns are syndicated in more than 400 magazines and newspapers worldwide. - Posted: TOWNHALL DAILY.com

A black Chevy Suburban SUV, manufactured by financially threatened General Motors Corporation, stands ready to transport high-ranking government officials at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2009. A GM bankruptcy would be one of the most complicated court-overseen restructurings ever undertaken. The imposing black Suburban has evolved as the archetype government security vehicle and is the standard for presidential motorcades and VIP's. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)