Since the mid 1970s the big 3 has been cutting both union and white collar jobs.
from 2005
The Big Three have shed about 600,000 U.S. jobs since 1980, while about one-quarter of Americans employed in automotive manufacturing (nearly 300,000) work for foreign-owned companies — and that excludes Chrysler, which was acquired by Daimler Benz of Germany in 1998. http://ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSreports/05apr/RL32883.pdf
1990 when the market dropped in response to the first gulf war they pushed for nafta and moved lots of production to mexico and canada to reduce costs.
in late 1990’s ford and GM spun off their parts companies: Visteon and Delco, reduce their costs, raise cash. They’ve increasingly outsourced design and manufacturing to their vendors. So johnson controls might design the seat and manufacture it, instead of ford doing design, picking subcontractors, etc then sending it all to JC to build. By the 1990’s ford and GM were already outsourcing most engineering jobs and focusing on having white collar employees manage the vendors rather than operated departements in house.
The unions (the american UAW has, the CAW in canada, much less) have made concessions to reduce work rules, allow more outsourcing etc. All this culminated last year when the agreed to the health care fund that will leave them with the liability of their own retiree’s health care.
So, they are doing a number normal business move to reduce costs and lead times. On the other hand all the money they pissed away on fuel cells and hydrogen that was at least 20 years away was about image and not actually changing the current situation.