GMC Offering Paid Leaves to Encourage Resignations

General Motors Corp., eager to slash its white-collar payroll, on Friday offered some employees a chance to take paid leaves of absence. The catch: They can’t come back to work.

Salaried workers who have been with the troubled auto maker for at least a year will be eligible for fully paid leaves of six to 15 months, depending on tenure. After that, they must quit.

GM officials said they hope the offer, with attrition, will reduce the company’s white-collar work force by a further 8,000 to 71,000 by the end of the year. GM officials didn’t immediately know how many people would be eligible.

“It sure as hell beats threatening to take them to an open window and throw them out,” said David Garrity, an auto analyst with McDonald & Co. Investments in New York.

“It shows the company is trying to go above and beyond the goals they set in the December, 1991, restructuring program,” he said.

At that time, GM said it would reduce its white-collar employment to 71,000 by the end of 1994. It since has moved that deadline to the end of 1993.

Ron Glantz, an auto analyst with Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. in San Francisco, said the leave plan amounts to a severance package.

“If my boss were to call me and say, ‘You’re fired’ he would give me two weeks’ notice,” Glantz said. “I think (GM plan) is very generous.”

Early retirement packages were offered last year to GM white-collar workers age 50 or older. That program and attrition reduced the company’s white-collar ranks from 91,000 to 79,000 people.

“These changes are designed to address both GM’s business needs and our longstanding commitment to provide competitive compensation and benefit packages,” said Richard F. O’Brien, GM vice president of corporate personnel.