Folks, this GM buyout thing is a short term cost long term benefit for the company. The reason that they are doing this is strictly financial, the payback for the cost of the buyouts will probably be a couple years to maybe three.

As far as the value of any worker, it is relative to the two involved, the boss and the employee. Anyone else is pure opinion and speculation.

Comparing a auto worker to a teacher, doctor, sales person etc. never works. Jealousy always creeps into the conversation because it is not a valid comaparison.

cookiedough:

Based on your experience you should have left sooner. I would not have stuck around any company in the mid 1990s while the stock market was going crazy for 3 years without a pay raise. There simply was too much opportunity for those who chose to act.

Serves GM right! They buyout people like myself in the mid 90's for a severance package working at GMAC financial services which was non-union making $9.00 per hour. GM has too many dead beat mid/upper management making well over 100K per year for doing nothing. Try working for a company like I did with GMAC who had a 3 year pay freeze and 1/2 of the office quit while the people who stayed had 2-3 jobs to do for no pay increase. Go Toyota! They will be #1 next year far outpacing GM vehicles. At least my Toyota Tundra is built in Texas vs. all my past Chevrolet Silverado's built in Canada or Mexico. Overall quality is better too.

Zoom. Do you really think current UAW workers are worth the $70.00 per hours for wages and benefits??? People with advanced degrees don't make these levels of wages. The new contract is part of the solution. However work rules still need to be addressed.

jdtrucker - the workers at the Japanese/Korean owned plant are not making as much money as the Big 2.8 workers, because those foreign plants haven't been around as long. The buyouts will eventually level the "wage" playing field, when all the older workers get replaced by new workers making less money under the new contracts.

No gravy train lasts forever. GM execs appeased the UAW workers in the 70's with pay increases when GM was riding high and they wanted to keep a good thing going at any cost. Unfortunately the time has come to pay the piper on that one. When over $2000 on every sale of a GM product goes towards pensions and benefits something is definitely out of whack.

Each month we read about new plants opening up in the Unitied States to build more Toyotas, Hondas, and other foreign nameplates. While on the other hand we also see each month GM and Ford announcing more and more cutbacks, layoffs, and buyouts. How can we have such different actions from two groups building the same product with the same Americans? Answer… UAW… This union forces management to spend most of its time and resources dealing with unhappy and unproductive workers instead of focusing on it core job of building great products at competitive costs…

So the workers are a liability to GM. They are truthfully worth less than nothing to the company. The company is better off paying them to go away. That is whacked. How can anyone be proud of that?

Why isn't the whole AP article here? Why abbreviate it?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080212/ap_o...

because if the people take the buyout then they dont have to pay for benefits,union crap,retirement,overtime,etc... so they can save more money buy offering a buyout rather than keeping people.

How can a company that is losing money buy its way out of recession by paying people large sums of money to not work? I am not criticizing GM or its workers or trying to be sarcastic. I just must be missing something about this business model. I understand what they are trying to do as far as getting out from under huge obligations for benefits, but how can this possibly work? I might add that it does not appear to be working so far.