DETROIT — General Motors is saving every cent it can, from shutting down escalators at night to limiting workers’ choice of pens, in case it needs to fight to survive beyond year’s end and until a friendlier Washington takes over.
The company has already cut its U.S. workforce by almost 80,000 people this decade, reducing it to 96,000, and it has idled five factories and laid off 11,000 domestic workers this year alone.
But the cost-cutting has accelerated as cash has dwindled and as Congress has fought over whether to send money to the automakers.
Factory supervisors who are seldom at their desks have had their land-line phones and voice mail yanked. The slimmed-down choice of pens in office-supply cabinets: one each of black, red and blue.
“It seems trivial, but when you have 100,000 employees or however many using supplies, they don’t need to be that prolific. It adds up,” said GM spokeswoman Renee Rashid-Merem.
The once-mighty icon of American industry and its smaller competitor Chrysler LLC have few options as they edge closer to bankruptcy.
The $14 billion auto-industry bailout bill stalled in the Senate on Thursday, with Republicans demanding concessions from the United Auto Workers union. It was not clear what givebacks the union was willing to discuss.
