General Motors is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the United States. It holds about 1% of employment in the United States. The company that sold over 219,000 vehicles in November of last year alone managed to sell 155,000 cars and trucks to the American public, a decline of 41% compared to last year. GM car sales of 58,786 fell 44% and truck sales of 96,091 fell 39%. The sharp decline in vehicle sales is largely due to the market's significant decline in retail demand compared to last year and continued economic uncertainty that has impacted consumer confidence. General Motors' market shares have always been low, but recently, since 1980, they have fallen to 20%. I've included a graph showing the decline of the entire auto industry. GM, of course, is no ordinary company. With revenues of $193 billion, it is an icon of America's declining industrial power. After all, GM's payroll pumps $8.7 billion a year into the pockets of assembly workers. Directly or indirectly, it supports nearly 900,000 jobs, from auto parts workers to advertising writers to car salesmen and office supply salespeople. When GM shut down for 54 days during a 1998 labor action, it lowered the U.S. economic growth rate that quarter by a full percentage point. So what's bad for General Motors can be bad for America as a country. General Motors is in big trouble, but not that big if help from Congress or a change at the company wouldn't change it. Yes, it will affect employment for a while, but it should recover within a few years, if not months. If the bailout goes through it will do nothing for General Motors. It will keep them going for "thing" for another 4 or 5 years. Of a... medium of paper... an unexpected event that occurs in their life or in a company's products or assets. The way General Motors might be able to fix itself without government help is to ask the union to ignore their contract and lifetime pension payments rather than start a fight. Nothing will be available to the unions or the head of General Motors if the company goes down the drain. The only thing that is certain is that, from the statistics, the union has never accepted a huge payback in the middle of the contract, but it did so in 1980, when the federal government asked for concessions as part of the Chrysler bailout and again in favor of Ford in 1980. 1981. GM's Kowaleski responds that there may be ways to get what GM wants by giving the union something in return: "Don't underestimate the breadth of schemes that can lead to a win-win"."