DETROIT — General Motors and Chrysler have asked the government for an additional $14 billion in aid, a dramatic acknowledgment that conditions in the U.S. auto industry have grown significantly worse in just two months.
GM presented a survival plan Tuesday that also calls for cutting 47,000 jobs globally and closing five more U.S. factories. That represents the largest workforce reduction announced by a U.S. company in the economic downturn. Chrysler said it will cut 3,000 more jobs and stop producing three vehicle models.
Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers union said it has reached a tentative agreement with Detroit’s Big Three automakers — Chrysler, GM and Ford — on modifications to labor contracts. Such concessions were also a condition of the government bailout.
GM said it could need up to $30 billion from the Treasury Department, up from a previous estimate of $18 billion. That includes $13.4 billion previously allocated and $9.1 billion in new loans. The world’s largest automaker said it could run out of money by March without new funds.
GM’s request includes a credit line of $7.5 billion to be used if the downturn in the auto industry is more pronounced than expected. But the automaker said it could be profitable in two years and fully repay its loans by 2017.
Chrysler requested $5 billion in new loans on top of the $4 billion it received in December. The company had said it might need an extra $3 billion.
Both requests were part of restructuring plans the two automakers owed the government in exchange for earlier loans.
President Barack Obama’s top spokesman told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday that he wouldn’t rule out bankruptcy for the Detroit automakers.
The GM job cuts include 10,000 salaried and 37,000 blue-collar positions, amounting to 19 percent of its current global workforce of 244,500. A total of 26,000 of the cuts will come from outside the U.S. The cuts would take place by the end of this year.
The new plan has the U.S. workforce declining from about 92,000 hourly and salaried employees at year-end 2008 to 72,000 by 2012.
GM chairman and chief executive Rick Wagoner said the plan submitted Tuesday is more aggressive than the one presented to the government Dec. 2 because the global economy and auto sales have deteriorated since then.
“Today’s plan is significantly more aggressive because it has to be,” Wagoner told reporters. “We have taken stronger actions; we needed to.”
The UAW said discussions are continuing regarding the union-run trust fund that will take on retiree health-care expenses starting next year. Under terms of the government loans, Chrysler and GM are required to reach concessions with the UAW and debt holders.
“The changes will help these companies face the extraordinarily difficult economic climate in which they operate,” UAW president Ron Gettelfinger said in a statement.
