Delphi bankruptcy raises big questions...
Miller says, besides pocketing the workers' pension and health care funds, the company must break its collective bargaining agreement with the United Auto Workers and two other unions and slash the wages of production workers by more than half, down to about $10 an hour.
That's $20,000 a year, pushing Delphi's workforce into the ranks of the working poor. “UAW members would not be able to afford a vehicle that our products are assembled into,” said a memo from the union to its members.
How does a company get away with unilaterally breaking its contracts with its workers and walking away with their pensions? The collusion of the courts — especially the bankruptcy courts — is key, observers say. Bankruptcy judges routinely allow companies to pay all other creditors before the workers. “Pensions are not even considered debt by judges like the one who gave the OK for United Airlines to walk away from its pension obligations,” says economist Case.
Delphi's employee pension fund is underfunded by $10 billion, according to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. That raises some big questions.
Where is that $10 billion, which represents decades of deferred wages by tens of thousands of Delphi workers?
“The surplus value generated by Delphi workers in the past has mainly been dissipated among executives, stockholders and banks,” says Art Perlo, head of the Communist Party's Economics Commission.
How much of the $500 billion yearly increase in the combined wealth of the world's 500 or so billionaires has come from the pensions of employees of bankrupt steel, airline and now auto companies?
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