The writer, a Los Angeles freelancer and former Detroit News business reporter, writes a blog, Starkman Approved.
By Eric Starkman
Imagine earning a Harvard MBA and an undergraduate degree in engineering from prestigious MIT and dedicating your entire professional life to General Motors. For 38 years you dutifully accepted whatever assignments the automaker threw your way and served for 16 years as chair of GM Plus, an employee resource group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and allied employees.
Mary Barra
Eventually you are assigned to lead the team responsible for keeping GM’s top management abreast of competitors’ future business, product, and propulsion strategies. You’ve held that position for 17 years.
Then one morning, at 5:07 a.m., there’s a company message tailored just for you.
You’re fired!
The scenario is what veteran GM employee Adam Bernard experienced a week ago and is representative of General Motors’ HR mismanagement and cruelty under CEO Mary Barra. Anyone thinking of joining GM and becoming one of Barra’s easily disposable Barra Bees would be wise to consider Bernard’s experience. Management attuned GM employees already are aware of GM’s ethically challenged leadership
“Well, in unexpected news, I was let go from GM at 5.07 am this morning via email, along with (I hear unofficially) about 1,000 people globally. I wonder what I should do next...?” Bernard posted on his LinkedIn page.
Adam Bernard (Facebook photo)
Reading the more than 400 comments on Bernard’s post it becomes readily apparent that he was a very much respected GM leader and mentor, and his knowledge and expertise much admired throughout the automotive industry. Bernard’s years of GM service and dedication warranted a personal call from Barra, but instead he was tossed aside with a heartless electronic message that’s angered a lot of accomplished executives in the automotive industry.
“This news is unbelievable to me and is compounded by the impersonal manner in which it was delivered,” posted Lucid Air Sedan Vehicle Line Manager John Maxgay, a former GM executive. “Your contributions to GM are legion, and you will be a major asset in your next role!”
“I don’t know what is more unbelievable; that they’ve resorted to such an impersonal methodology that lacks any semblance of compassion and treats employees who were once touted as part of a 'family' as nothing more than a means to an end, OR that this has taken place on the watch of some of the same Senior Leaders who once espoused the primary importance of integrity and trust,” posted Jeff Setting, GM’s former global vehicle chief engineer.
GM's Galling Statement
In a galling media statement, General Motors said that “in order to win in this competitive market, we need to optimize for speed and excellence,” adding, “as part of this continuous effort, we’ve made a small number of team reductions.”
A “small” number of team reductions? Perhaps in the greater scheme of GM’s global workforce of 163,000 employees, but it represents 4% of GM’s Tech Center workforce, assuming the 25,000 workers GM says its Tech Center employs is a current number. GM fired 600 software engineers assigned to its Tech Center campus in August. GM so routinely throws its employees under the bus that even Greyhound’s entire fleet couldn’t shelter them all.
GM’s management turnover is particularly alarming. Marissa West, who worked at GM for more than 20 years, inexplicably left the company in August just eight months after being named President GM North America. A month earlier, a trade publication reported that Mei Cai, who oversaw the development of GM’s Ultium EV platform, had resigned after 24 years with the company. Gil Golan, who played a pivotal role establishing GM’s R&D center in Israel, “retired” one month after being promoted to chief technology officer.
As for GM optimizing “for speed and excellence,” the statement begs the question why the automaker employs a brigade of PR people to routinely issue clueless statements to the media. Elon Musk did away with Tesla’s PR department years ago, and despite all his controversies, Wall Street values Tesla at more than $1 trillion. GM at this writing is valued at $64.3 billion.
Lin-Hua Wu (Linkedin photo)
Adding insult to injury, GM’s top PR person, Lin-Hua Wu, is based in San Francisco, according to her LinkedIn profile and other public references. Michigan is chock full of competent PR persons who unlike Lin-Hua, have considerable automotive experience. Perhaps Lin-Hua’s west coast sensibilities contributed to Barra’s diss of Michigan’s technology and automotive engineers.
GM is "going to go to where the talent is," Barra told The Detroit News when the automaker opened its Silicon Valley office earlier this year. "It's not to say that our people aren't great, but if you haven't been a software engineer and doing the type of software that is needed, you don't have time to learn. Bringing in the right talent, wherever they are, is going to be important."
Really? Silicon Valley-based Lucid, which manufacturers an EV more technologically advanced than any vehicle GM builds, recently opened an engineering office in Southfield that ultimately will include 250 of what Gov. Gretchen Whitmer would no doubt call “very good paying jobs.”
Gale Halsey (Linkedin photo)
“We want to track the best talent out there and as we looked at those studies for hardware, engineers in particular, there’s no place like Michigan,” Gale Halsey, Lucid’s senior vice president for people, employee health, and safety, told the trade publication Automotive Technology.
Halsey, who studied HR management and labor relations at Michigan State, previously worked as a Ford HR executive at the automaker’s Dearborn headquarters and in Mexico, where the company has substantial manufacturing and engineering operations, despite claiming on its website that it is “All In On America.”
Dissing Locals
GM also has dissed its longtime local Metro Detroit advertising agencies, shifting work to out of state shops who don’t respect or value GM enough to establish a local presence.
“Through our evaluation we selected the very best-in-class agencies in the entire world,” GMs Global Chief Transformation Officer Molly Peck told Crain’s Detroit Business.
As far as GM is concerned, there are no best of class agencies in Michigan, just as there are no capable PR people in the state to oversee the company’s communications. GM’s “Global Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer” is Norm de Greve, the former marketing chief at CVS who joined GM a year ago. No doubt de Greve will leverage his experience marketing Tylenol and toilet paper to help Barra achieve her dream of one day selling more EVs than Elon Musk.
At least de Greve is based in Michigan, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Barra is a darling of the corporate and automotive media, possibly gracing the covers of more magazines that any CEO in U.S. history. Not surprisingly, there has been scant coverage of the $500,000 settlement GM reached last week with the Department of Justice to avoid criminal prosecution for filing a false report relating to an accident involving the company’s Cruise driverless taxi subsidiary. Barra chairs Cruise’s board and was chastising Wall Street analysts for undervaluing the business just hours before it had to suspend operations because of regulatory issues.
In June, Cruise agreed to pay $112,500 to the California Public Utilities Commission to settle the dispute. Three months later, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) fined the company $1.5 million. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles also criticized Cruise’s response to the accident.
Let’s not forget that weeks after Barra became GM’s CEO, it was revealed that GM knowingly sold Chevrolet Cobalts and Saturn Ions with faulty ignition switches that could inadvertently shut off car engines and airbags, a problem linked to at least 97 deaths and forced the recall of 2.6 million vehicles. Barra vowed she’d ensure that GM never again would cover up safety issues.
GM blamed Cruise’s “culture” for the company’s regulatory issues and forced out more than a half dozen executives, some of whom are highly regarded, including Gil West, who Hertz immediately scooped up to serve as CEO of the troubled rental company. West is the former COO of Delta Airlines and was credited with successfully merging Delta’s operations with the former Northwest Airlines.
Wonder what became of Cruise’s former chief people officer presumably responsible for the company’s allegedly troubled culture? That would be Arden Hoffman, who Barra two years ago elevated to serve as GM’s chief people officer.
Hoffman’s title suggests she bears responsibility for Adam Bernard’s early morning email termination notification. When Hoffman joined GM, she told employees she’d be dividing her time between Detroit, San Francisco, and Montana, where she presumably has a home.
GM faces more than a dozen class action privacy violation lawsuits for monitoring the driving habits of unsuspecting owners of its internet-enabled vehicles, information that found its way to insurance companies that used the information to justify higher premiums. Texas AG Ken Paxton also has filed a damning lawsuit, which I’ve previously speculated could result in GM paying at least a $1 billion penalty based on Paxton’s settlement history for privacy violations.
Disingenuous Statements
In yet another example of the shameful and disingenuous statements issued by GM’s PR folks, the company told the Detroit News it takes its customers’ data security and privacy “very, very, seriously.”
Let’s also not forget the $16.5 billion Barra spent to buy back GM’s underperforming stock during her tenure as CEO, which boosted the valued of the stock and allowed her to pocket $84 million for herself.
Terminating an employee who faithfully served a company for nearly four decades with an email message is symptomatic of a company with a serious leadership problem, underscored by the considerable turnover of top executives during Barra’s reign. While GM’s PR people wax on ad nauseum about the company’s “team culture,” in fact they are treated as hired help, while Barra continues to get paid her obscene and underserved compensation, totaling $28 million last year despite Barra failing to achieve her previously stated goals and objectives.
I’m doubtful that GM has a compelling future if Barra remains at the helm. I’d consider it poetic justice if Barra, PR chief Lin-Hua Wu, and chief people officer Arden Hoffman were all fired and notified of their terminations with early morning email messages.
In writing about their firings, rest assured I’d dutifully note their departures represented a “small number of team reductions” that were necessary to “optimize for speed and excellence.”
Reach the writer at Eric@starkmanapproved.com. Confidentiality is assured.
