Up to 20,000 expected to take buyout

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said Thursday he expects 15,000 to 20,000 General Motors Corp. workers to take the automaker’s latest round of early retirement and buyout offers.

But the estimate is lower than what it would have been in better economic times, he said.

GM is offering buyout or early retirement packages to all 74,000 of its UAW-represented workers.

GM won’t say how many workers it hopes to shed or how much it expects the buyouts to cost, but under its new contract with the UAW, it will be able to replace up to 16,000 workers doing nonassembly jobs with new employees who will be paid half the old wage of $28 per hour.

GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC all are in the midst of offering buyout and early retirement packages to their UAW hourly workers and all three have provisions in their contracts allowing them to replace at least some of the workers with those making far less money.

Gettelfinger said the union has not discussed with GM the possible use of pension funds to help struggling parts maker Delphi Corp. emerge from bankruptcy protection.

“We would be very cautious about that,” he said.