General Motors Continuing Battle Against Structural Costs

Just like its arch-rival, Ford, General Motors has had a woe-filled year in 2006. Since the biggest tragedy in modern times, the September 11 attacks, the real funding of their health care system was put in the limelight, it being under funding specifically. While that may be the case, the company is still the number one automotive company in the world, and with steps to battle the structural costs incurred in the past years and other losses, the company is slowly making progress over the economic crisis it is facing. It may take some time but the company is definitely moving in the right direction when it comes to improving their financial status.




A step taken by the company was to reduce its hourly paid employees by offering them early retirement and buyouts. This was done in the face of mounting financial problems in health care costs. Up to 35,000 workers were affected by this move done on the part of the company. This included blue collar workers involved in the production of GMC parts and cars, while losing that big number of employees, it seems that the exodus of such an amount of the workforce did not cut down the productivity of the company.




That radical step was undertaken even after they have lowered their annual costs from $9 billion to $8 billion last year. The company was reported to have lost $3.03 billion on the first

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