Approximately a thousand GM workers, mostly salaried, received notification today – Friday, November 15th, 2024 – that their job at General Motors has been terminated, effective immediately.
According to a news report by The Detroit Free Press, most of those laid off were employed at the GM Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. Bearing the sobriquet of “the Industrial Versailles,”, the Warren Tech Center (WTC) is GM’s primary global facility for R&D, vehicle development, including design and engineering, and many other functions.
Some of the laid-off workers also worked in other U.S. facilities and, while the majority of terminations were in America, members of The General’s global workforce also received a pink slip. Many appear to have been notified by email, with instructions to provide their personal email address to receive related paperwork. Those with belongings at work were told they could send a message to a special email rather than returning to the office for the items.
GM said in a statement that “in order to win in this competitive market, we need to optimize for speed and excellence,” resulting in the cost-saving job cuts. It added that “as part of this continuous effort, we’ve made a small number of team reductions.” A handful of hourly United Auto Workers (UAW) union members were also laid off along with a majority of salaried employees.
Back in August, General Motors terminated the jobs of more than 1,000 salaried software and services workers in a similar manner. Many of these also worked at the Global Technical Center in Warren, though international employees were also laid off in considerable numbers at that time.
During the same month, GM cut jobs in China, once again targeting research and development departments. A year before, in August 2023, 200 engineering positions were cut, in a move to “simplify marketing, engineering, manufacturing, while maintaining the best features customers want.” Closure of the Arizona IT Innovation Center was announced at approximately the same time.
An anonymous GM source said most of those let go were not chosen because of poor performance – with some being top performers – but were simply laid off in “the normal course of business, to make sure you have people in the right places and doing the right thing.”
Comments
Lay off the people that built the 8 speed.
Oh General Mediocrity never learns.
When you have another *software* related recall maybe you’ll learn. I wonder how much $$$ was wasted on the Cruise vanity project from Mary Barra.
All of these technical problems with GM. They can’t even put a glovebox light in many of their vehicles. I purchased 2 new GM vehicles last September, a GMC Denali and a Buick GX Avenir ($100,000) . Neither vehicle has the glovebox light. Talk about CUTTING CORNERS! Jerry Miller GOOD BYE GM
I too purchased a new 2024 Buick Enclave Avenir, $60K+ with no glove box light. It is called decontenting. Sad! And yes cheap. Especially in GMs luxury vehicles.
It was eliminated because the NHTSA that is run by unelected and inept bureaucrats did not mandate them.
Laying off 1000 people by email, how classy.
Yes terrible isn’t it.. And oh.. contact us by email to have us send your personal items back to you! And MTB was the Chief of HR for Two years, this before she was crowned Queen of GM.
Sounds like what the Brazilian scum did to over 3000, older Anheuser-Busch employees when they bought the American Beer Company in 2009. Must be the latest Corporate “fad” the HR departments use.
By email and to obtain personal belongings, send an email. One of the worst atrocities against employees I’ve seen. Send one to Mary.
And right before the holidays. How heartless.
I’m afraid this is the sign of things to come, however.
Nice company. People with marketable skills should never work for a company that treats them like yesterday’s garbage.
To those that have been laid off, you have my sincere condolences. To those currently still employed but awaiting the next inevitable purge, there are much better companies and industries out there to work for. Dump them before they dump you. You’ll be glad you did.
A job at GM used to be covered and their employees were treated well. Not any more. What a pittance this company has become .
And MTB with all her hyperboly about Working with Integrity.. My colleague would tell me its all B.S.. And he was so correct. Too bad I found out the hard way by trusting her.
And of course, we can’t criticize her because we may be called misogynistic.
“in order to win in this competitive market, we need to optimize for speed and excellence,” “as part of this continuous effort, we’ve made a small number of team reductions.”
Nice word salad. Laying off 4 percent of your salaried workforce does not seem like a “small reduction” to me.
The statement should read “because of continuing mediocrity due to the incompetence of our upper management, we have to extract another ton of flesh to atone “
Amen to that Tigger.
Word salad Barra delivers again! Just in time for Thanksgiving! Because of your screwups toss your workers out the window without warning in the most indignant way possible not even letting them take their things and have them contact through email as if your some kind of criminal! Sounds about right for the “new normal” of Malaise era II!
The article makes it sound like the layoffs might have impacted the Celestiq production facility on the Warren campus.
GM also recently shut down their Cold Weather Development Centre in Ontario which was also known as the Kapuskasing ProvIng Grounds. They did vehicle testing for extreme cold weather endurance. All staff was laid off.
… Ontario proving grounds were seasonal and hardly anyone worked there.
From an employee standpoint layoffs are never a pleasant thing over the years I have experienced this unpleasantrie it is never a joyful acceptance; I cannot say I know how they feel for this to take place this time of the year let us all be mindful of the quarums of BIG business.
$40 million dollar a year Mary Barra won’t lose any sleep over the layoffs She’s running GM into the ground.
“No, it’ll be profitable until the last person is left.”
Maybe Mary is believing everything she hears from the fake news media about Trump. We all know she loved Biden.
Remember, Trump was not too impressed with her his first term.
Not the same company it use to be! I no longer trust GM based on my own very negative .
Go woke, go broke!
Workforce goes down, recalls go up.