President Trump says the Obama-Biden administration threw 20,000 former Delphi workers “under the bus” when they bailed out the auto industry and worked to slash workers’ pensions.
During a rally in Waterford Township, Michigan, Trump slammed Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden for his role in the Obama administration’s auto bailout of General Motors (GM) that left thousands of Delphi Corporation workers with gutted pensions that they had earned for decades.
“When GM went bankrupt, Biden and Obama threw the workers at Delphi Corporation … they threw these people under the bus and days ago, I signed an order to restore the pensions and all of the other things, not only Delphi, in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan who were treated very unfairly,” Trump said.
In 2009, as part of the Obama-Biden administration’s taxpayer-funded bailout of 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.
In response, Trump this month signed a memorandum that orders federal agencies to devise a plan on how to restore the Delphi workers’ slashed pensions over the next 90 days.
“You’re going to be taken care of,” Trump said, pointing to a handful of Delphi retirees in the crowd. “They were promised by Obama, they were promised by Biden actually, but then Biden realized he didn’t understand the deal. He wasn’t smart.”
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.
Those involved with the pension-slashing scheme, such as Tim Geithner, Steven Rattner, and Ron Bloom, are currently pouring thousands of dollars into Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign.
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.
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