Uncertain what it will mean for area workers, local union leaders said they were reserving judgment on General Motors’ agreement with the United Auto Workers to offer buyouts to 125,000 GM plant workers.

Jeff Manning, vice president of UAW Local 31, said it was too soon to know how the offer might affect workers at GM’s Fairfax plant in Kansas City, Kan.

“We haven’t gotten any feel for it yet,” Manning said.

Several Lawrence residents are members of Local 31, though the union could not immediately say how many.

Manning and other senior officials will travel to Detroit early next week to meet with GM for discussions about the union deal.

There is a good possibility local union members would take GM up on the buyout offer, but Manning said that depended on details of the agreement, which won’t likely include benefits or heath care for factory workers who agree to leave the company.

Doug Houston, a professor at Kansas University’s School of Business, said he hadn’t expected GM to offer buyouts to so many workers.

“It’s a shocking number,” Houston said.

Houston said the buyouts were a necessary step to pump life into a company that lost more than $10 billion last year.

The company, Houston said, needs a work force that is flexible and less expensive in areas such as benefits and retirement packages – something the new deal with UAW accomplishes.

But even with a more flexible work force and slashed costs, the world’s largest automaker may still face a collapse.

Ron Tadross, the Bank of America analyst who after Delphi’s bankruptcy hinted toward GM’s possible collapse, told the Guardian U.K. that those chances now are “more likely than not.”

Though he didn’t say the company is doomed, KU’s Houston said GM has “troubles,” rather than simple problems that are quick to fix.

The company has a chance, Houston said. GM board members and executives will now try to examine how to slim down a bulky operation with high fixed costs and mounting losses.

“Some of that,” Houston said, “is going to be very difficult to do.”