By Jesse Russell

Fewer than 500 salaried employees were laid off at 30 General Motor locations yesterday. Dubbed, "Black Tuesday" by the media, the layoffs follow an announcement earlier this year of plans to slash the jobs of more than 36,000 hourly workers in North America by 2008. Last Wednesday GM announced it had negotiated a buyout plan with the unions representing those hourly workers for between $35,000 and $140,000. The salaried employees laid off yesterday are not eligible for the buyout plan, but do receive a severance pay of one-month for every year they were employed by the automaker - up to 15 months. GM laid off 500 engineers in January and 2,000 salaried employees last year.