GM Korea to Reduce Salaried Staff

General Motors Co.'s South Korean unit is offering buyouts or early retirement to all 7,000 of its office workers, Reuters reports.

GM Korea confirms the voluntary scheme, which mirrors an earlier offer to senior salaried employees. The company won't say how many jobs it aims to eliminate.

Workers who opt to leave will receive as much as two years of salary, two years of tuition support and a car voucher worth 10 million won ($9,200), according to Reuters, which cites a company memo. Employees have until Dec. 14 to decide whether to accept.

GM Korea says the buyout program does not affect its roughly 10,000 hourly employees. Those workers are worried about job cuts because the company has said it will end production of the Chevrolet Cruze compact in Korea in 2014. The Cruze accounts for at least half the output at GM's assembly plant in Gunsan.

The company is trying to streamline operations as domestic and export auto demand shrinks. Korea's sales of passenger and commercial vehicles in the first 10 months of 2012 dropped 7% from a year earlier to 1.14 million units, the Korean Automobile Manufacturers Assn. reports. Exports fell 3% to 2.34 million units.