The people who opted into the VSP were the ones who could easily find another job, and were happy to take the money. Some of them even came right back in a consulting role after a 2 month cooling off period. The people who never even considered the offer were the low performers who knew they were getting paid far more than they could hope to command on the open job market.
GM already has a list of employees they have considered laying off to cut costs. They're hopeful that the people who volunteer are mostly on this list. Now GM can refuse to accept volunteers who they consider critical to business operations. Those people should immediately demand large pay raises.
That being said, this is pretty shitty severance package, especially since it's only being offered to people with 5 years or more of service. Unless you know you can find another job quickly why would you take a 5-12 months of pay with no extra benefits? (COBRA is about the most expensive way I can imagine to pay for private health insurance for many people.)
I suspect the worst case scenario for GM is they are about to have a ton of experienced and competent employees with important institutional knowledge walk out the door, and find themselves left with a bunch of new hires that aren't really sure how to keep the business operating at corporate.
They had a lot of people who planned to retire in 1-3 years take that offer and I knew quite a few who came back within a couple of months for a higher salary than they previously had.
so is this desirable to the company because older aged workers aren't as productive as a younger person? I would've imagined that in most skilled trade, experience accounts for a lot.
General Motors will offer voluntary buyouts to a “majority” of its U.S. white-collar employees, according to a letter sent to workers Thursday from CEO Mary Barra.This is also a way to "encourage" those considering retirement to do it on your terms.
You can’t legally discriminate against people because of age over 40; otherwise age discrimination is legal.
Also, most forms of illegal discrimination are routine, much of the work of HR and management training in regard to discrimination exists to make sure that hiring managers know what domcumentation needs to reflect irrespective of the true basis of personnel decisions so that illegal discrimination is difficult to prove (that’s not how it is framed, of course, because the training itself is part of the record.)
It's another round of Finance vs Industry.
It's often a numbers game and where anyone that passes the interview at the same level = the same so to them (management) it's just about reducing the numbers. No 1 is better or worse so it makes no difference who goes.
I've never seen layoffs done well. The selection has always seemed somewhat arbitrary, and not through want of trying.
The physical nature of engineer and manufacturing means facilities are spread all over a metropolitan area. Particularly, manufacturing tends to be built agricultural property that's on the edge of suburbia.
It's the only legal option though. "We're gonna lay off all the lazy ones in bulk" gets you into trouble