YOU EITHER GET IT OR YOU DONT

Well i dont know what to say but its no looking good for GM




Vauxhall, owned by crisis-hit American carmaker General Motors (GM), is to offer staff sabbaticals of up to nine months as it tries to cut costs amid the global economic downturn.

Cars await collection from the Vauxhall manufacturing plant in Ellesmere

The initiative will allow workers to take between two and nine months off at 30% pay.

And it will be trialled among the manufacturer's 2,200 staff at its Ellesmere Port plant in western England.

"We're basically looking at cutting the structural cost of running the business," said director of communications for GM UK Denis Chick.

"One of the things we're trying to avoid is forced redundancies, because when we have an upturn, we need to have people there to make the cars."

The famous "Big Three" US vehicle manufacturers, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors, are all in serious trouble.

Union bosses who have seen their accounts say General Motors will run out of cash before 2009, with Chrysler not far behind.

Ford, while still struggling, says it is in better shape.

The situtation has prompted US President George Bush to re-think his refusal to divert part of a $700bn (£470bn) cash pot set aside to help struggling banks.

A separate rescue package worth £9.41bn to help the iconic manufacturers was proposed and accepted by lawmakers in Congress.

The plan would have required the firms to undergo painful restructuring to ensure they could survive in the long term and pay back the money given to them by the government.

However, Republican senators voted it down amid a row with unions about pay rights.

This prompted the White House to say it may step in and use cash from the $700bn Troubled Asset Relief Programme (Tarp), which was set up to help financial services firms.

"Given the current weakened state of the US economy, we will consider... use of the Tarp to prevent a collapse of troubled automakers," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Speaking aboard President Bush's official Air Force One jet, she declined to say when a decision would come but said the White House understood "the urgency of the situation".

She added that the US "could not withstand a body blow like a disorderly bankruptcy in the auto industry" which would "devastate further an already weakened economy".

Government officials have not ruled out allowing one or more of the companies to go bankrupt, but would provide enough financing to enable a reorganisation, the New York Times reported.

US President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on January 20, urged the White House and the Congress to "find a way" to provide urgent aid while forcing "the long-term restructuring that is absolutely required".