Panel: GM’s Know-Nothing Management “Alarming”

Skeptical Congressmen grilled General Motors Co. CEO Mary Barra for nearly three hours on Wednesday about the her ability to change a bureaucratic corporate culture that delayed for more than a decade a recall of 2.6 million cars to fix ignition switches linked to 13 fatalities.

They also challenged the thoroughness of the 325-page report on GM's shortcomings released earlier this month. Author Anton Valukas, a former U.S. attorney, conceded to the panel that the report "answers many questions [but] leaves open others."

Committee member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) described as "alarming" the report's conclusion that GM's previous CEOs, its legal department, the board and Barra all remained unaware of the deadly defect until late last year.

One Congressman questioned whether GM decision to fire 15 employees as a result of of the Valukas report will be enough to change the company's approach to operating. Barra reiterated her commitment not to accept "business as usual at GM" and declared "I will not rest until these problems are resolved."

Committee members cited GM's decision this week to recall another 3.4 million cars over a second ignition switch problem as evidence that bureaucratic complacency at GM is widespread. The new recall targets a different switch design but one exhibiting the same problem that prompted the earlier campaign: an easy ability to be jolted out of the "run" position by the driver's knee or a bump in the road.

Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) produced a memo written in 2005 by a GM engineer who experienced firsthand the problem with this week's recalled switch. Her e-mail to 11 GM executives, including the head of North American engineering, described the flaw as a "serious safety problem" that could warrant a "big recall."

The Valukas report found multiple instances of the continuing insistence within GM to consider the earlier ignition switch problem a matter of customer inconvenience rather than a safety issue.