NEW YORK -- General Motors bondholders want a majority stake in the restructured automaker in exchange for forgiving their claim to $27 billion of GM debt, a committee representing the bondholders said Thursday, according to The Associated Press.

The bondholders' counterproposal follows a much less generous offer from GM on Monday. GM is working furiously to reorganize and shrink its teetering debt load before a government-imposed restructuring deadline a month away.

The committee said under its proposal GM's bondholders would take a 58 percent stake in a reorganized automaker. That would leave a union-run health care trust with a 41 percent stake and current equity holders with 1 percent.

The proposal leaves the U.S. government without an equity stake in the new GM and saves taxpayers $10 billion, the bondholders said. They said it is fairer than GM's proposal because it allocates equity to the United Auto Workers union and to the bondholders based on how much money they are owed.