I too had many years in the auto business, and 2008 was the year my division essentially "retired" everyone 55 years old and 30 years with the company. We got a year's severance pay, another 5 weeks vacation, a supplement on the pension to make up for not getting social security (to age 62), ability to purchase their healthcare to age 65 and 50 weeks unemployment. I came out smelling like a rose.
Those eligible for GM retirement would do well to go ahead and go voluntarily. Those eligible but not taking the package may be sent home involuntarily with lesser benefits than those eligible for retirement. Sounds as if the packages being offered are not as good as those 10 or 20 years back. And it also sounds as if there is a large group of GM employees that are 10 year employees. That means the old time workers have already been retired/sent home--15 or 20 years ago. GM presently only has about 1/3 of the employees they had in the 1970's anyway. It's already a scaled down operation. So many components made by GM are now contracted out to non-union factories all over the country.
I do feel for the employees, especially in the Rust Belt. But we southerners are building much better products than ever came out of Detroit or Ohio. I have 5 major auto factories within 2 hours--and a bunch of components factories. They had a robot with a shovel last week in Huntsville dig the first bucket of dirt for the new Mazda-Toyota factory--another major industrial coup for the state.