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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > October > 30
Friday, October 30, 2009
Editorial: Salaried Delphi retirees getting left out
That proverbial crack you often hear about people falling through is claiming a new set of victims:
Delphi retirees who were salaried — that is, didn’t belong to a union.
They have already been told they will not get life insurance and medical benefits they expected, because of the company’s bankruptcy. Now they are being told they won’t necessarily be getting the pensions they expected.
Among the four categories of retirees from the original General Motors — GM and Delphi, union and non-union — they have been hardest hit.
(According to The New York Times, the average Delphi salaried worker with long service was making about $96,000 as he or she approached 50. That means a lot of people were making less.)
The pension situation is a long story. When General Motors spun off Delphi a decade ago, the pension plan for salaried employees was in good shape. The plan for hourly workers was not. So, to get the unions to sign off on the spin-off, GM promised to make good on all pension promises to Delphi union members, whatever happened to Delphi. But no such promise was made to salaried workers.
When Delphi went into bankruptcy , the federal government took over responsibility for the pension plans of both groups. That will result in some people getting less than they expected. That’s because the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation has rules to guard against companies getting too generous, then dumping the cost of their promises on taxpayers.
The PBGC covers basic benefits (up to $54,000 for those who retire at 65 , less for earlier retirees). But the government doesn’t necessarily cover, for example, any inducements a company might have offered to get a worker to retire early.
For unionized Delphi retirees, GM has stepped in to “top off” the government payments, so people will get whatever the company told them they would get. But that offer doesn’t apply to salaried retirees.
Some people say the company’s action on behalf of unionized workers stems from politics. They point out that GM is largely owned by the government, and they suggest that the Obama administration wants to take care of the unions.
In truth, however, the more innocent explanation — about the promise made at the time of the spinoff — seems reasonable.
At any rate, in the normal course of things, retirees whose pension plans are bailed out by the feds can’t expect a top-off.
The salaried Delphi retirees have filed suit and also have brought their case to Congress. A committee on which Ohio’s Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, sits is involved.
The salaried retirees hope to get all their benefits, possibly by being put back in the GM plan. Dennis Black, of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association, says there are only about 7,400 such retirees. (For the Dayton area, the number is about 700.) He says GM is paying the pensions of 122,000 salaried retirees through a fund that is now in good shape.
There’s a limit to what Congress can do about this problem, given that it has already set up the pension guaranty program, That program has been a godsend to a lot of retirees. Created in the 1970s, it now has responsibility for 3,800 pension plans that have been terminated by employers. It says that 85 percent of retirees get from it what they were expecting from their employers.
What Congress should do is comb through the Delphi situation for the horror stories — for the vulnerable people who are taking bigger blows than anyone intended, who have fallen into the biggest cracks — and try to get them fixed.
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Martin Gottlieb: Pro-gambling forces have way too good a hand
2009 ELECTIONS
Elections about legalizing casinos ought to be best four out of seven. It’s good enough for baseball.
Doesn’t something seem profoundly unfair about the fact that, having lost four times in the last two decades in efforts to bring casinos to Ohio, the advocates might now get casinos by winning just once?
Worse yet, each of the last four times, they lost big (62 percent to 38 percent just last year). Now they can win with just 50 percent of the vote plus one.
You have to like those odds. It’s as if the game was designed for the casinos (just like the games at the casinos).
The people who invented the country’s political system put all manner of hurdles in front of people who want to pass laws. You have to get a proposal through one house of a legislature, then another (then reconcile the two versions), then get the president or governor to sign off, or else go back and get two-thirds of both houses.
Then, given the way the system evolved, you have to basically get approval from the courts on the constitutionality of the measure.
But these days, with a ballot measure — boom. One vote. That’s it. Sometimes you don’t even have to worry about the constitution, because the vote is about changing the constitution.
Theoretically, if casinos are ever approved, it would be possible to undo the approval, again through the constitution. But one vote is all that’s necessary to get casinos started. And the reality is that once they’re in, they’re in.
After all, the people who make a living in the industry join forces with the people who incorporate gambling into their lifestyles — plus the interests that get the gambling tax money — to become a political coalition nobody wants to mess with.
Anyway, regaining a state’s virginity isn’t nearly as galvanizing a political goal as maintaining its virginity. That’s the thing about virginity.
Now it’s true that each gambling proposal that’s been put on the ballot is different from the previous one and is funded by somewhat different interests. These differences may matter to some voters.
But you have to guess that roughly the same voters form the base of each side each time: the pro-gambling people versus the anti-gambling people.
If the 2009 measure passes, that will suggest that what really changes the minds of the voters who are being fought over is the state of the economy. Things are now worse than in any of the previous tries.
And yet, if the measure passes, it will sustain casinos in good times — when the majority of voters don’t want them — and bad. (Truth is, judging from recent reports about how casinos are doing across the country, they actually make more money — attract more gamblers, if not more voters — in good times than bad.)
What’s to be done about the fact that the deck is stacked in favor of the gambling interests?
Insist that they must win more than one statewide vote, say two out of three, if not four out of seven? No. Obviously, the public would not be enthusiastic about “Groundhog Day” (the movie) elections.
And if you feel, as I do, that we already put way too many matters on the ballot, then putting them there repeatedly doesn’t look like progress.
It’d be nice if some sort of commission could be set up to decide whether a particular ballot measure should be labeled a pro-gambling measure, and if a limit could be imposed on the number of such efforts allowed per decade. Certainly a ban on attempts in consecutive years would be in order.
In reality, though, constructing and operating such a system would be awfully dicey. (Good grief, gambling metaphors are relentless.) It’s not going to happen.
For all kinds of reasons, pro-gambling forces have been convinced for decades that casinos will come to Ohio eventually. When particular entrepreneurs and corporations put together a specific ballot proposal, the idea is largely to beat competitors to the punch.
Also widely believed for years has been the notion that what you really need to get a casino measure passed is a lousy economy. That’s one reason the promoters keep coming back: Ohio’s modern economy is almost always lousy. The question has been just how lousy must it get.
If the economy just keep getting worse and worse, and if there’s no legal limit on the number of attempts you can make, and if you only have to win once, and if the money to fund your attempts is limitless (because the payoff is an unknown multiple of limitless), you’re too lucky to be allowed in the house.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio politics, Sports and Recreation
