Delphi Workers: Joe Biden Had 7 Years as Vice President to Restore Our Pensions but Did Nothing

Delphi workers who had their pensions slashed during the Obama-Biden administration’s auto bailout say Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden had seven years as vice president to represent their interests but chose not to.

In 2009, as part of the Obama-Biden administration’s taxpayer-funded bailout of General Motors (GM), the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) terminated the pension plans of about 20,0000 non-unionized Delphi workers. In some cases, workers had their pensions gutted by as much as 75 percent.

A federal report in 2013 detailed that the Delphi workers would likely have their pensions cut by an estimated $440 million. Meanwhile, GM topped off unionized Delphi workers’ pensions at a cost of about $1 billion.

After President Donald Trump’s administration confirmed that he is weighing plans to restore the Delphi workers’ slashed pensions, Biden changed his tune during a campaign stop in Alliance, Ohio, where he said the workers “deserve the pension” after saying in 2012 that the workers “did fine” in the auto bailout.

Members of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association (DSRA) said they are open to hearing what Biden would do as president to restore their pensions, considering he did not act over the course of seven years as vice president.

“We agree with what Mr. Biden said in Alliance. We do deserve our pensions — the full, earned amount we were promised and planned to receive in our senior years,” DSRA’s Chuck Cunningham said in a statement:

Then Vice-President Biden sung a different tune in May 2012, when he was campaigning for reelection. Biden told a different TV reporter, “We were able to protect the hourly workers. Some salaried workers got hurt.” [Emphasis added]

The Obama/Biden Administration had seven years to correct the injustice and horrible damage that was done to the salaried retirees, our families and our communities when our pension plan was terminated during the involvement of the Administration in the GM bankruptcy. We would be glad to work with Mr. Biden to help him understand the damage that was done when that administration chose not to protect the salaried pensions in the same manner as it did the major union pensions. [Emphasis added]

Cunningham said the Obama-Biden administration “chose instead to divide the workers at Delphi into winners and losers by supporting full pensions for the members of the major unions who often worked side-by-side with the salaried workers.”

The pensions of secretaries, clerks, technicians, engineers, estimators, customer service representatives, front-line supervisors, and thousands of other salaried workers were “completely disregarded” by the Obama-Biden administration, Cunningham said.

DSRA members say the funding for their pensions “was always sufficient to pay the full pensions of the participants and there was never any financial need to terminate the plan.”

Cunningham said the president does not need to pass legislation in order to restore the “unjust and unnecessary termination” of the Delphi workers’ pensions.

In 2012, federal documents unveiled how the Obama-Biden administration’s Treasury Department worked to gut the pensions of the Delphi workers. In other emails, PBGC officials indicated they had the green light from the Obama-Biden administration to slash the pensions.

Delphi, which has since split into Aptiv and Delphi Technologies, announced in 2006 that it would shutter 21 of its 29 plants in the United States — offshoring some 20,000 U.S. jobs to Mexico, China, and other foreign countries.

At the time, Delphi employed nearly 50,000 Americans who earned about $30 an hour on the assembly line. Now, workers in Mexico for the company earn about $1 an hour.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.