The answer is General Motors. In 2005, General Motors said that it would cut around 25,000 jobs from its blue-collar work force in the US by the end of 2008, in a wide move to reckon with its decreasing grip on the American car market. The cuts, which signify about 22 percent of the hourly work force, would bring G.M.'s national employment to 86,000 hourly workers, roughly the number it employed in the city of Flint, Michigan, in the 1970's. The act will comprise an unspecified number of plant closings and is the most sweeping single job cut announced since 1992, though G.M. has already reduced nearly 30,000 hourly and salaried workers over the most recent five years. The company hopes to continue to make the cuts largely through buyout and early retirement offers and to elude layoffs.
