The issue of how Delphi salaried retirees’ pensions have been handled in recent years has taken on growing political overtones. U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, and members for the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association have been critical of the Obama administration’s handling of the pensions.
Salaried retirees lost their pensions to the federally backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. in July 2009 as Delphi went through bankruptcy, a shift that cut pension payments by 30 or more percent.
When pensions are shifted to the PBGC, they are almost always lowered.
The salaried retirees want to see their full pensions restored and have the PBGC named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit.
General Motors paid the difference between lower PBGC pension payments and the payments GM promised contractually to retirees represented by the United Auto Workers. GM once owned Delphi and has remained Delphi’s largest auto parts customer, and the federal government helped shepherd GM through its own bankruptcy process in the spring and summer of 2009.
U.S. Treasury officials have said they had nothing to do with Delphi’s decision to relinquish pensions to the PBGC, or GM’s decision to pay the difference between contractual obligations and PBGC payments for UAW-represented retirees.
But Delphi non-union retirees and their supporters, including Turner, have pointed to emails, unveiled in House hearings and media reports, as showing that the administration exerted undue influence in the process, in some cases shutting out PBGC staffers out of meetings, for example.
The issue is becoming more political ahead of the Nov. 6 election. Let Freedom Ring, which describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan organization, this week announced a $7 million online advertising campaign “exposing how the Obama administration terminated the pensions of Delphi’s non-union workers while he bailed out the union workers’ pensions as part of the 2009 General Motors reorganization.”
The ads have been purchased to run online from Oct. 22 to Nov. 6 in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, Let Freedom Ring said.
Dayton-area residents Mary Miller and Tom Rose (among other retirees) appear in at least one of the ads, which can be viewed on youTube.
Today’s rally is open to the public. From westbound U.S. 35, participants can turn right at Abbey, left at West Third Street, then left at South Upland Avenue for parking.
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