GE says it will lay off thousands, but not 75,000.(Chicago Tribune)

General Electric said it's moving ahead with a plan to cut tens of thousands of jobs but denied a published report that as many as 75,000 workers will get pink slips after the company's pending $45 billion acquisition of Honeywell International Inc. closes.

Analysts estimate the Fairfield, Conn., company will cut 20,000 to 30,000 jobs in relation to its Honeywell acquisition, plus an additional 20,000-plus jobs in other areas of the sprawling company. Those cuts are expected in addition to the 28,000 lost in the closing of Chicago-based Montgomery Ward & Co., which GE owns.

But these totals are far fewer than those cited in a Business Week magazine article released Wednesday.

Citing anonymous sources, the magazine tagged the layoffs to outgoing Chief Executive Officer John F. Welch and said he intended to eliminate at least 75,000 jobs, or about 15 percent of the combined companies' work force. That figure, the magazine said, doesn't include the 28,000 Montgomery Ward employees.

In Fairfield, a GE spokesman said those figures were "speculative and as such inaccurate." Layoff figures will be decided by GE's various division heads, he said, in order to meet the financial goals of their divisions.

As for Honeywell, said the spokesman, Gary Sheffer, the company has yet to complete its consolidation planning and so any guess as to how many jobs will eventually be cut from the merger "would be wildly premature."

Ever since Honeywell agreed to GE's buyout bid last October, observers ...