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Lawmakers demand answers on Delphi pension cuts

Delphi’s salaried retirees were treated differently than union workers.

Audience members listen during the hearing Monday about why salaried Delphi retirees were stripped of health and life insurance benefits. Staff Photo by Jim Witmer

Jim Witmer Audience members listen during the hearing Monday about why salaried Delphi retirees were stripped of health and life insurance benefits. Staff Photo by Jim Witmer

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By Thomas Gnau, Staff Writer 10:51 PM Monday, November 14, 2011

DAYTON — The U.S. House committee demanded answers in a local hearing Monday on why pensions for salaried retirees of Delphi Corp. were treated differently than pensions for other company retirees.

At issue is the fact that salaried Delphi retirees, including about 700 in the Dayton area, saw their pensions cut by 30 percent to 70 percent when the pensions were transferred to the federally backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. in 2009.

At the same time, General Motors elected to support the pensions of retirees represented by three large unions.

“The least powerful group was always going to get screwed,” said U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Committee members and retirees asked how this could happen when GM had received more than $52 billion in taxpayer funds by March 2010. The federal government helped GM emerge from bankruptcy in 2009. GM is the largest customer of Delphi, which itself left bankruptcy about four months after GM.

“To me, clearly, the Delphi pensions plans were an obstacle to getting GM out of bankruptcy,” testified Washington Twp. resident Tom Rose, a Delphi retiree who spent 30 years working for GM and nine years working for Delphi.

“The taxpayer dollars of every Delphi salaried retiree were used in a process that discriminated against you,” committee member U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, said told a standing-room-only audience at Sinclair Community College’s Smith Auditorium.

For salaried retirees, the issue is one of economic survival.

“Those who haven’t suffered economic wreckage yet will most certainly suffer in the next decade or two, should they be unfortunate enough to live that long,” said Den Black, interim chair of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association and a Piqua native.

The association is suing the PBGC among others in federal court to have their full pensions restored.

“We are spending money that we don’t have to fight a government that has our money,” said Chuck Cunningham, a former Delphi executive.

Vincent Snowbarger, PBGC deputy director for operations and former PBGC acting director, testified that different treatment of pensions was a result of decisions made by GM. But committee members rejected that explanation, given that the federal government was helping GM.

“We don’t buy that, and no one in this room buys that, that there was an independent GM,” Turner told Snowbarger.

Retirees said they appreciated the chance to talk about the issue and the committee’s attention to it. “To bring Congress to Dayton to hear our concerns — I don’t know what more you could ask, other than President Obama coming to Dayton to explain why the (federal) Auto Task Force did what they did,” said Englewood resident Scott Branscum. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Said Delphi retiree Alan Schide, of Springboro, “I’m glad they’re really fighting for us, since a lot of questions went unanswered by PBGC in their unwillingness to provide any information.”

Turner said the issue came down to two questions: “Where is the money, and how do we get it back?”

Added Issa: “Quite frankly, we have to figure out how to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com. Staff Writer Mary McCarty contributed to this story.

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