Nissan North America reports that its offer to buy out 1,200 of its Tennessee factory workers with lump-sum payments up to $125,000 has proved popular.

As the buyout deadline passed on Friday, September 12, the company declined to say how many of the 6,600 workers at two Tennessee plants have taken the buyout, saying that the paperwork was still being tabulated. Workers have three weeks to change their minds.

The company said in July that it had about 1,200 more technicians than it needed at its 25-year-old Smyrna, Tennessee, vehicle-assembly plant and its engine plant in Decherd, Tennessee. Not all of the 6,600 employees are eligible for the buyout.

Nissan offered a lump-sum payment of $100,000 or $125,000, depending on tenure, plus a year of health coverage and a car-purchase discount. Another buyout program is planned for 2009, and still another for 2010, although the benefits will be reduced in those years, the company said in July.

Filed by Lindsay Chappell of Automotive News, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

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