GM's Cruise Cuts 24% of Its Workforce 29
General Motors' Cruise robotaxi unit announced today that it will lay off 900 employees, or 24% of its workforce. The news follows the departure of nine executives amid an ongoing safety investigation following an inccident in which a pedestrian was dragged by one of the company's self-driving cars. CNBC reports: The company had 3,800 employees before Thursday's cuts, which also follow a round of contractor layoffs at Cruise last month. Affected employees will receive paychecks until Feb. 12 and at least an additional eight weeks of pay, plus severance based on tenure. A Cruise representative also told CNBC that the company's goal is now to work on a fully driverless L4 service, as well as relaunching ride-hailing in one city to start. In a statement, a Cruise spokesperson said, "We shared the difficult news that we are reducing our workforce, primarily in commercial operations and related corporate functions. These changes reflect our decision to focus on more deliberate commercialization plans with safety as our north star. We are supporting impacted Cruisers with strong severance and benefits packages and are grateful to the departing employees who played important roles in building Cruise and supporting our mission."
GM added, "GM supports the difficult employment decisions made by Cruise as it reflects their more deliberate path forward, with safety as the north star. We are confident in the team and committed to supporting Cruise as they set the company up for long-term success with a focus on trust, accountability and transparency."
GM added, "GM supports the difficult employment decisions made by Cruise as it reflects their more deliberate path forward, with safety as the north star. We are confident in the team and committed to supporting Cruise as they set the company up for long-term success with a focus on trust, accountability and transparency."
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A job that doesn't feed me is a job I do not need. Good riddance.
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LOL. $50 an hour for tightening bolts on an assembly line is quite enough, Cletus.
It's got nothing to do with Unions (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you're trolling, there's no content to speak of in your post, just a bunch of inflammatory remarks. You're not fooling anyone.
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I'm not trolling, I'm just aggregating media sources about all the layoffs which people in the media are refusing to talk about as a result of the union strikes earlier this year.
They're quite visible:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/03... [cnn.com]
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/04... [cnn.com]
https://www.freep.com/story/mo... [freep.com]
Re: It's got nothing to do with Unions (Score:5, Informative)
In this case though these are white-collar business and IT types getting the axe. Not the factory workers.
IT and office workers were AFAIK not part of the strikes, at least from what I saw. In fact, I doubt they are even a part of a union to begin with at GM.
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GM had to cut costs, the white collar workers are just part of that. As I said above, thousands of unionized factory workers have also been cut and this has a knock-on effect to their distributors which are also laying off 20-50% of their workforce. Rivian and Ford are doing the same. Right now the only place that is actually hiring is non-unionized Tesla.
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I'm pretty sure that Cruise is a subsidiary of GM. Meaning "GM cutting costs" and "Cruise lays people off" are not related. This isn't about the auto industry or GM so much as very public, pricy failures from Cruise.
Further, Cruise is staffed with software engineers, a group of white collar workers that is pretty union-resistant (not unlike yourself). Cruise is not staffed with unionized blue collar auto workers. This was not caused by unions.
The very strong assertion that this was caused by unions was prob
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Of course this [stlouisfed.org] could have something to do with it. A lot of pricey tech startups are letting people go because the cost of money tied up has gone up to the highest it has been in the last twenty years.
Since other similar startups are also tightening their belts it seems more plausible that interest rates are more to blame than rising costs in a completely separate business unit. If GM were actually cash strapped, you'd be able to point to that in their SEC filings.
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In this case though these are white-collar business and IT types getting the axe. Not the factory workers.
IT and office workers were AFAIK not part of the strikes, at least from what I saw. In fact, I doubt they are even a part of a union to begin with at GM.
Strangely enough, the types of people who aren't unionised.
Much like factory work, when you lay of 1/4 of the workforce they don't reduce the amount of work by 25%, the remaining people just get even more to do. Particularly in IT (I suspect accounting, et al. will have the same issue. Inhuman Resources and middle management could afford to lose most of their departments but I suspect were completely untouched).
Re:It's got nothing to do with Unions (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not trolling, I'm just aggregating media sources about all the layoffs which people in the media are refusing to talk about as a result of the union strikes earlier this year.
They're quite visible:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/03... [cnn.com]
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/04... [cnn.com]
https://www.freep.com/story/mo... [freep.com]
Well for one you're mixing up figures, your OP said GM laid off 3,800 employees, but that's actually the total number of Cruise employees. I don't see any way to coincidentally reach 3,800.
GM is also making record profit [macrotrends.net], so I'm not sure it makes sense to blame the layoffs on financial pressure.
Realistically, it's basic supply and demand. The demand for EVs hasn't grown as quickly as they expected and inflation + supply chain means some new car purchases are switching to used (hard to find figures, but this seems to be the case).
Fewer cars sold means fewer cars made, and fewer cars made means fewer employees are required, hence layoffs.
If anything the strike should have prevented layoffs as post-strike GM would need more employee hours to make up the lost production.
And tying the Cruise layoffs to the strikes is even more incoherent. Cruise went from operating a fleet of hundreds of Taxis to heading back to the drawing board. You really think they'd maintain the same headcount?
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You aren't fooling anyone either. Other than yourself.
Re:It's got nothing to do with Unions (Score:4, Interesting)
despite the interest rate hikes, which were necessary to curb inflation (which they have).
To be a bit off topic, no, the Fed interest rate hikes have not curbed inflation. The Fed numbers aren't accurate either for the real rate of inflation nor how much inflation has cooled. What has happened is companies have raised prices to garner more profits and are now at the point where they can't raise any further because that will drive down consumption.
Further, most companies haven't issued bonds at the higher rates. They are still feeding off the Fed-induced binging of low rates from two years ago. There is another year or two to go before the higher rates start to affect the bottom line, but the Fed will lower rates before then sending us into another supply-induced orgy of unbridled optimism. And inflation.
All the bullshit about rising wages, bottlenecks due to covid, and so on making inflation higher can be ignored. Right now this is all about padding the bottom line and the Fed manipulating the economy.
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The Fed numbers aren't accurate either for the real rate of inflation nor how much inflation has cooled.
What's the real rate, then?
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The Fed numbers aren't accurate either for the real rate of inflation nor how much inflation has cooled.
What's the real rate, then?
The real rate of inflation is roughly 2 points higher. And it's not just now. The Fed has always been behind the curve of inflation because they don't live in the real world. In their world numbers are the truth regardless of everything else. They never anticipate, only react, and by the time they react it's too late. People are already getting hammered. The 2 - 3 years it takes for the Fed to do something leads to an erosion of what little wealth the average person has because wages never keep up wit
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I don't think it's accurate to say the tech isn't working. Cruze's safety record is as good as, or better than, human drivers.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2... [arstechnica.com]
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Thank the trolls (Score:2)
How is a sales slump & tech foul-ups the union's fault?
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Probably for the best (Score:5, Interesting)
A news reporter recently got to test out some rides in self-driving cars in San Francisco. The Waymo car, while not perfect, felt mostly like it was being driven by a person. The Cruise car was awful, to the point that its own behavior led to someone actually kicking it hard enough to trip the collision sensor.
The cars driving in Beam.NG look smoother and safer.
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A news reporter recently got to test out some rides in self-driving cars in San Francisco. The Waymo car, while not perfect, felt mostly like it was being driven by a person. The Cruise car was awful, to the point that its own behavior led to someone actually kicking it hard enough to trip the collision sensor.
The cars driving in Beam.NG look smoother and safer.
Strangely enough, Beam.NG highlights the problem with self driving cars.
In Beam.NG, on a clear, straight road they'll never go over 30 MPG, will stop for every single intersection regardless of if they have to, when there are multiple cars on an intersection all cars will stop. Lets not even get started on maps like Italy or Jungle Island where you've narrow roads and two cars can't manoeuvre around each other, so you get two cars refusing to move and tailbacks behind each. Keep in mind that the cars wil
On the Bright Side (Score:4, Funny)
On the bright side, it's 75% better than Theranos.
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On the bright side, it's 75% better than Theranos.
On the dark side of regulation, it only has to be 10 - 15% better than human drivers are today.
42,000+ deaths racked up by those lame meatsacks behind the wheel on American roadways last year. Hell of a low bar to trip over. I'd guess Cruise will be ready for approval by Easter to meet that standard.
(I can only hope I'm off by a order of safety magnitude, but I kinda doubt it.)
Someone at GM just read a safety manual. (Score:1)
Weren't they just saying that they needed to drop airplay and android support for safety? Now they have to fire people for safety? What's next? They have to have public floggings for safety? They need anybody running a GM car to pay them $100 a month, for safety? You can't just poop out the word "safety" as a catchall for any action the company takes and expect people to buy it. This was about the bottom line, like all corporate decisions are. With the airplay/android thing? It's about collecting user data
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The problem the health and safety officer at GM was putting up signs to try and reduce workplace accidents that said "Safety = Money" and the executives took that to heart and assumed the reverse was true as well.
Aggressive marketing (Score:2)
That's one way to get them into the showroom.