General Motors has axed more than 4,400 contract jobs in the United States in a little more than two years as part of its cost-cutting programme.
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Many of those were white-collar design and engineering jobs at the company’s Warren Technical Center in Michigan, according to a Dow Jones report citing the Detroit Free Press. The cuts have gone largely unreported because they came in small batches of five or 10 jobs at a time, the paper reportedly said.
“With contract workers, they come in when they are needed or their skills are needed. But when those needs go away, we reduce the number we need,” GM spokesman Kerry Christopher told the paper.
Kerry told Dow Jones that the company had 12,601 contract employees in 2001, and now has just over 7,500.
Dow Jones said that some contract work, like design or engineering support, has been transferred to a new GM research lab in Bangalore, India, but the company would not say how many jobs were transferred there.
