The company is going away anyway. In fact it really is bankrupt already by any rational standard. On its present path, it will be a foreign company very soon and the number of jobs in the U.S. will be very few. GM's pension plan is reasonably safe - shareholders will have to pay worker pensions no matter what
HOWEVER
General Motors has a health plan that is underfunded by $60 billion. If the company goes bankrupt, the pension plan stays put but they don't have to pay $80 billion in healthcare costs. In the history of 80-billion-dollar debts people can get out of, how many times have people NOT tried to get out of them? Exactly.
In other words, the company is heading to bankruptcy court anyway, it's just a matter of when and who's drivin'
A perusal of the business press leaves one with only one impression - GM should have folded up or got taken over long ago, and it's all the workers' fault. "What's all the worker's fault?" - you ask? Yes. It's all the workers' fault. Anything - you name it.
The United Auto Workers have almost three GM retirees for every worker. Inevitably, they will try to protect the health benefits of those union retirees by agreeing to benefits give-backs for present workers. That's not what unions should be doing.
Unions should protect the future and stand up for themselves. The United Auto Workers have lost "The Battle of the Overpass" that Walter Reuther and the radical toughs of the 30's won. But they're still powerful. They can't save GM workers or retirees' healthcare benefits. Those are going away. But what they can do is drive the company into bankruptcy court (it's bankrupt already) and get a reorganization plan with some worker control and government participation in the healthcare component. That would be a boost to the Universal Healthcare movement and it would do something even more important: restore some pride.