GM to cut 10,000 salaried jobs

By Kevin Krolicki and Soyoung Kim

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp GM.N will slash its global salaried work force by about 10,000, or 14 percent, this year and impose pay cuts on most remaining white-collar U.S. workers as it scrambles to reduce costs under a restructuring mandated by its U.S. government bailout.

GM, which was granted $13.4 billion of government loans in December, said on Tuesday it would cut its salaried work force to about 63,000 from 73,000 during 2009.

In the struggling automaker's home market, about 3,400 of 29,500 white-collar jobs will be cut. At the start of the decade, GM had 44,000 salaried employees in the United States, the majority of them in southeast Michigan.

Most jobs will be cut by May 1, and most remaining U.S. staff will see pay cuts of between 3 percent and 10 percent for the year, GM said.

The job and pay cuts come in addition to buyout offers for GM's union workers and represent the latest step by the automaker to pare its operations ahead of a deadline to present a restructuring plan to the U.S. government on February 17.

The moves also add to a growing toll from the downturn for U.S. automakers that began in 2005 and drove both GM and Chrysler LLC to the brink of failure in 2008 as the recession deepened.

Chrysler LLC CBS.UL, which also received $4 billion in government loans and is seeking an additional $3 billion, is currently offering buyouts to its U.S. hourly work force after cutting more than 8,000 salaried jobs in 2008.

"These difficult actions are necessitated by a severe drop in vehicle sales worldwide and by the need to restructure GM for long-term viability," GM said in a statement.