March 26 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp. has persuaded more than 6,000 United Auto Workers members to take buyouts, meeting internal company goals and almost doubling a Barclays Capital estimate, people familiar with the results said.

The Detroit-based automaker will announce the participation today, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the tally is unofficial. The buyouts, about 10 percent of GM’s UAW workforce, may open slots for GM to hire workers for half the current union rate. Terms on $13.4 billion in U.S. loans require GM labor costs to match Japanese automakers in the U.S.

“I would have expected 4 or 5 percent of the workers,” said Richard Block, a labor professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing. “Ten percent suggests a lot of people were pushed out by the uncertainty.”

GM and Chrysler LLC are encouraging workers to accept buyouts, retire or quit after concessions this year eliminated benefits related to job security and unemployment pay. The unprofitable automakers must reduce labor expenses to receive as much as $21.6 billion in new U.S. financing the companies say they need to survive and reorganize.

President Barack Obama’s auto task force will announce more aid for GM and Chrysler within a week, possibly in a few days, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said yesterday.

‘More Support’

“It’s clear that there will be more support and it will be with some conditionalities, which will be made clear within a week,” Levin told reporters in Washington.

Steven Rattner, the U.S. Treasury’s chief auto adviser, said March 20 the task force would give a “sense of direction” before the end of the month. March 31 is the automakers’ deadline to show they can restructure and remain viable.

“It’s something that will be positive,” Levin said of the task force’s planned announcement. “The administration wants to be helpful. It is clear to me that there will be conditions and that there will be clear direction as to where they’re headed.”

GM’s union-buyout program covers about 62,000 employees willing to retire or quit and consists of a $25,000 voucher to buy a new auto and receive $20,000 in cash. The company’s goal is to get half of about 22,000 eligible workers to leave, and GM budgeted for about 6,000 to take the current offer, a person familiar with the plans said.

Seven Days

Workers who accepted the buyout by the March 24 signup deadline have seven days to reconsider. GM and UAW spokesmen aren’t commenting on buyout totals until the data are released.

GM rose 29 cents, or 9.7 percent, to $3.28 at 9:57 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares tumbled 85 percent in the past year before today.

Barclays analyst Brian Johnson in Chicago projected in a March 12 report that GM would persuade about 3,100 workers to leave. GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler cut more than 124,800 hourly jobs with buyouts or attrition in three years.

Union workers at Ford, which isn’t seeking government loans, ratified changes March 9 after reaching an accord on a plan to replace as much as half of future payments to a UAW-run retiree health-care fund with stock instead of cash. GM and Chrysler are still negotiating retiree-fund changes.

The Ford UAW concessions eliminate the so-called jobs bank that paid workers most of their wages to report to a work location when there were no duties to perform. Pay that supplements unemployment has been reduced. Laid-off employees who refuse to take a new job, even hundreds of miles away, lose their benefits.

Ford, Chrysler

Ford’s buyout program, which pays as much as $75,000 in cash and vouchers, begins April 1 and ends May 22. Those offers may be accepted by 5 percent, or about 2,100, of Ford’s current 42,000 UAW members, Johnson wrote.

Chrysler may shed about 3,000 workers in a buyout, people familiar with that program said this week. The deadline for acceptances, originally set for tomorrow, has been extended indefinitely because new contract language with the UAW isn’t complete, company spokesman Max Gates said today.

A new deadline will likely be set after changes to the contract are approved, Gates said.

Cerberus Capital Management LP’s Chrysler is offering cash and a vehicle voucher with a combined value of as much as $75,000 to its 28,600 UAW workers. The Auburn Hills, Michigan- based automaker granted buyouts of as much as $100,000 last year when 13,200 union workers left.

GM started the first of its announced plans for 10,000 salaried-worker cuts March 24, eliminating 160 mechanical engineering jobs in Michigan, spokesman Tom Wilkinson said. The automaker has a May 1 deadline to complete the reductions, which include 3,400 U.S. employees.

The company got 34,400 union members to leave in 2006 with packages of as much as $140,000, and used pension funds to help pay as much as $62,500 for 18,000 UAW members to depart in 2008.

“It’s surprising in the sense that they just had two buyouts and you would have thought most people who were interested would have taken one,” Block said. “With all the bad news and publicity at GM, I suspect some people just said ‘I’ll get out.’”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Green in Southfield, Michigan, at jgreen16@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 26, 2009 09:59 EDT