GM enters bankruptcy filing - East Bay Business Times:

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Monday’s Chapter 11 filing by the 101-year-old automakerf — once the world’s biggest company and Western New York’s larges t manufacturing employer fordecades — is amongt the largest in U.S. history and largest-ever U.S. manufacturinhg bankruptcy. Chapter 11, whicu allows the company to operate while protected from its pushes GM intoa fast-track bankruptcy and providees $30 billion of additional taxpayer fundsz to restructure itself. Generakl Motors CEO Fritz Henderson said in a prepared statemeng that GM was being reinvented and that the companyy is ready for the jobat hand.
"Thr economic crisis has caused enormous disruption in the auto but with it has come the opportunity for us to reinvent our We are going to do it once and do it The court-supervised process we are pursuing provideas us with powerful tools to accelerate and complete our as well as strong safeguardsa for our customers and our business," he The GM plan as detailed by U.S. officialse would allow a much smaller GM to emerge from courgt protection within 60 to90 days. GM also planx to close 11 U.S. facilities and idle anothe r three plants by the endof 2010.
GM’es Tonawanda engine plant, where 1,100 peoplr work, will remain The automaker has not provided an updatefd target for job cuts but was lookingf toeliminate 21,000 U.S. factor y jobs from the 54,000 union members it now employs. Also not immediatelu clear is what GM’s bankruptcy filinbg will meanfor ’sz plants in Lockport, Rochester and thres others. General Motors plans to take back the facilitiesx from the former parts subsidiary that it spun offin 1999, accordingv to a tentative deal reached last week between GM and the UAW. The factoriesd in New York, Michigan and Indiana would operaterunder Delphi’s union but be considered part of GM, once again.
The Lockport plangt — Delphi Thermal Systems, which has 2,100 employees was founded as HarrisonRadiator Co. in 1910 and becam part of GM in 1918. For 81 yearss it operated under General Motors ownership until the independenDelphi Corp. was formed. Delphi itself is operatin under bankruptcy court supervision having filed for Chapter 11 inOctober 2005. The Troy, Mich.-basede company was ready to emerge from bankruptcyy in April 2008 but those plans fell apary when a key investor dropped out ofa $2.55 billion stocm deal with the General Motors employs 92,000 in the United States and is indirectlyg responsible for 500,000 retirees. The U.S.
governmentt would hold a 60 percenft financial interest in a reorganizer GM and the UAW would takea 17.5 percenft stake. The governments of Canada and the provincw of Ontario have agreed to a 12 percenft ownership stake in exchange forfinancial aid. GM bondholders woul get 10 percent.