GM CEO Mary Barra told employees buyout offers meant to cut costs while avoiding layoffs.
IMAGE: General Motors
To help meet a $2 billion cost-cutting goal, General Motors is offering buyouts to most salaried employees.
The voluntary buyout offers are part of its effort to reduce its salaried workforce of about 58,000 through attrition rather than layoffs, GM CEO Mary Barra said in a letter to employees.
The Detroit-based automaker, the largest in the U.S., laid out a target in January of trimming $2 billion in costs over two years.
GM plans to take a pretax charge of up to $1.5 billion to meet the buyout costs.
The buyout offers are separate from the approximately 500 salaried worker layoffs GM said it’s making last week.
The layers of cost-cutting are designed to increase vehicle profitability and stay competitive “in an increasingly competitive market,” GM told CNBC.
