GM Korea is moving to accept early retirement of senior office workers and pushing for shift changes at one of its plants to help cut costs, corporate and labor sources said Friday.

Insiders at South Korea’s third-largest carmaker said company CEO Sergio Rocha announced a voluntary retirement plan for team leaders and executive-level employees early last month and that the measures would take place late this year or the beginning of 2015.

The total number to leave GM Korea is expected to be similar to those that opted to retire in February of this year. At the time some 300 office workers and some car production line supervisors left the company, after getting a maximum three years’ worth of wages in advance, separate from their severance pay.

In addition, Rocha said that there is a need to change the present two-shift system at the company’s Gunsan plant, 274 kilometers south of Seoul, to a single shift, to take into account a drop in sales. The plant makes the Cruze compact and Orlando small multipurpose vehicle.

The decision by GM, the automaker’s U.S. parent company, to halt sales of Chevrolet brand cars in Europe, has affected export demand. (Yonhap)