UAW opposes Delphi exec bonuses

[question everything]

UAW opposes Delphi exec bonuses

By Dee-Ann Durbin, Associated Press
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

DETROIT - The United Auto Workers union is asking a bankruptcy court judge to reject Delphi Corp.'s plan to reward executives with cash bonuses and stock options if the auto supplier emerges from bankruptcy.

"At a time when Delphi is proposing deep cuts in wages and benefits and contemplating a severe contraction of its domestic operations that could leave tens of thousands of employees both hourly and salaried without jobs, deep resentment and anger over a program valued at over $500 million can neither be understated nor should it be ignored," the UAW said in a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The UAW posted the filing on its Web site late Tuesday.

(snip)

On the day before Delphi filed for bankruptcy in October, the company said it was boosting the severance packages for 21 top executives. Under the new agreement, executives will be eligible for 18 months of pay if Delphi lays them off. Previously severance packages were capped at 12 months. In exchange, executives signed agreements promising not to work for competitors for the 18-month period. Delphi also wants the court to approve a separate package that would grant 10 percent of the equity of the reorganized company to 600 executives if Delphi emerges from bankruptcy. That package also would pay out bonuses to executives both during and after bankruptcy.

The UAW calculates the value of the stock options is $400 million. The union also says the bonuses would cost $42 million annually during bankruptcy and $89 million once the company emerges from bankruptcy.

(snip)

http://www.dailybulletin.com/business/ci_3249720

[awoke_in_2003]

1. How many times do we have to see this

before something is done about it. Make big wage cuts and benefit cuts, but management gets bonuses. Just Plain Disgusting.

[question everything]

7. Even the former CEO of Northwest Airlines left earlier this year

to get another obscene job with a health insurance company that pays its CEO close to $100 million, and he, too, got a nice buh-bye package.

[POAS]

2. Labor is weak right now and needs to get a new footing

Nobody, either pro or anti union likes the idea of giving huge bonuses to top executives while thousands of workers are getting the axe.

Unions can reignite their base and win new support outside that base by fighting and winning battles like this one which is outside the bounds of their "normal" battles for wages and benefits.

[cyberpj]

13. To get any power I think they'd have to begin with Walmart employees

The auto makers and manufacturing jobs can just be shut down and moved overseas.

Until and unless there are service sector jobs unionized, unions are finished.

[POAS]

14. Many retail workers are already organized

I think that area will be increasingly concentrated on by labor but it isn't only about organizing and winning contracts.

To win back the goodwill of the general populace will take outreach beyond the traditional. Outreach to communities, volunteer work by locals and some PR are just a few ways labor must explore to get back its good name.

[cyberpj]

16. Agreed. I'm old enough to remember "Look for... the union label" song

Feels like we need to get something like that started again. Get the country to take some pride in supporting our own people over cheap products which equal cheapening workers.

Just another sort of patriotism, innit? - Why aren't unions using that route?

Another step - start unionizing workers for American Corporations overseas in order to bring UP the standard of living there instead of taking it down here.

If anything ever needed a unified grassroots movement, this is IT.

[POAS]

17. One problem with that approach

or should I say obstacle (because I think the idea has merit) is that the foreign governments would, in many cases, be hostile (maybe even ciolently hostile; i.e. China) to union organizing activities.

Remember that worker exploitation in the begining decades of the industrial revolution is what gave rise to both the trade unions and communism. Corporations and the Fascists (sorry - make that Corporatists) that support their growing appetites for profit and control will exploit by whatever means the labor of the masses. In their shortsighted focus on the bottom line in the next quarterly profit report they blind themselves to the larger and more long range problems associated with the burdens they are placing on society.

Take the oil industry for example. Record setting profits at the expense of consumers forced to pay $3 a gallon with no payback in the way of return of that money through road maintenance or other civic projects as would be the case if that extra cost was in the form of taxes. Instead "big oil" soaked up that extra largess until the outcry became so load that Congress threatened action.

When the corporatists have finished the takeover of government there will be no more threats of action on behalf of the populace. The only thing that will stop them after that will be when the people rise up again as they did in Russia and to a lesser degree in other parts of the world.

[JohnnyRingo]

3. I'm a Delphi retiree here in Ohio

The latest dope is that they transfered $40+billion to the Euro operations before the bankruptcy.
I hope the SEC is looking into it, but hope has not been an effective tactic here so far.

It appears Delphi is broke the same way Donald trump was bankrupted....until his divorce from Ivana was final. Then he was rich again.

Such devious chicanery would explain why the board thinks execs deserve bonuses.

[Kolesar]

4. Slate.com had a good article on the travails of the automakers' suppliers

Basically, GM+Ford squeezed the suppliers to cut costs for years. It worked until commodities prices went up (copper, oil->plastics, etc). Then the wheels came off.

Daniel Gross is a great writer: http://www.slate.com/id/2130797/

I was born in that town. How many people work at what I remember as Packard Electric these days?

[JohnnyRingo]

10. When I started at Packard Electric in 1972 (in my father's footsteps)

they were hiring 100 people a day. Employment soon grew to 12,000 employees. Those were certainly good times for most here.

Since then the company and union worked together in the spirit of competitiveness to balance work here and the trend to produce in third world countries (Mexico).

That trend actually began in the late '70s, I had a bumper sticker on my car in '78 that said: My Job Is In Mexico, Is Yours Next?" How prophetic that turned out to be.

As time went on and more and more jobs went south the IUE agreed to concessions that allowed for multi-tiered pay and benefit scales. When 3 "traditional" workers retired or left, one low wage employee would move up to the 1st rate wage. The goal was to downsize without permanent layoffs, and retain a living wage for as many as possible here.

I retired under one of the many incentive programs offered to allow for the downsizing and bring the lower tiered workers up to parity.

This all tied into the so called "Lifetime jobs agreement". It was was inked to ensure that the employment in Warren would not sink below 5,000 workers. The "Jobs Bank" is a part of that agreement. The company sent more jobs out of the country than agreed upon and created a surplus of positions here. Delphi would rather keep the jobs in Mexico and have 400 workers sit and read the newspaper here in town.

Delphi Warren never claimed that the union were anything but cooperative and even claim that the Warren plant is very profitable. The problem, they say, are unprofitable companies under the holding group such as Delco, Harrison, Saginaw Gear, and Rochester. Regardless, under the rule of new CEO Steve Miller, the ax has been replaced with a sledgehammer, and workers everywhere will be forced to compete dollar for dollar with China, Mexico, and now South America. Needless to say, this is not feasible and is doomed by design.

To finally answer your query, about 4,000 remain on North River Road and the few branch plants that remain. Over one third of those are in management as the company was reluctant to dismiss salaried employees, choosing to shuffle them around in their own form of a "Jobs Bank".

I'll be okay through this, but I know many who still have children at home or owe too much on their house to survive here. Home prices have dropped dramatically in recent months owing to lack of buyers due to an unsure future at both Delphi and GM Lordstown. Fear of a "ripple effect" is a cloud that hangs over Trumbull County of late, and a look at the despair of nearby Youngstown is like looking into our future.

I used to jokingly blame all my woes on my ex-wife....Then GWBuxh came along. Now I really have something to complain about.

[Kolesar]

11. I remember a $6/$15 two-tier system.

That was back when I was earning minimum wage of $3.25 while I was in college. I think those were the numbers.

GM Lordstown got a break with the Cobalt production. That will keep them going a good while. If that place ever closes, the Mahoning Valley will look like one of those coal mining towns from which all of the workers moved to get jobs at GM in the 1960s.

[LiberalFighter]

5. Consider contacting the following:

United States Trustee
Deirdre A. Martini
U.S. Department of Justice
Office of the United States Trustee
33 Whitehall Street, 21st Floor
New York, NY 10004-2111
T: 212-510-0500
F: 212-668-2255
http://www.usdoj.gov/ust/r02/

Robert Drain is the Judge in the
New York Southern Bankruptcy Court

[question everything]

8. As well as Paul Hackett and the other one - cannot remember the name

running for a senate seat in Ohio. I suspect that there are many GM and Delphi retirees in Ohio. This issue should be right on top for the ones wanting to represent Ohioans.

[Kolesar]

12. Sherrod Brown, the man who led the fight against CAFTA

Our next Senator

[IChing]

6. If the worker got the raises that CEOs got minimum wage would be $23.03

Chief executive officers at 367 top U.S. corporations were paid, on average, $431 last year for every $1 paid to their companies' average production worker, according to publicly available information jointly compiled in September by Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.

In 1990, the ratio was about $100-to-$1. (If the federal minimum wage had increased since 1990 by the same rate as the multiple for CEOs' pay, it would have risen from $5.15 an hour to $23.03, but, of course, it's still $5.15.)

New York Times, 9-4-05

[question everything]

9. But, hey we reward them with fat tax cuts...'cause they are our friends (n

[depakid]

15. The real abuses in the Bankruptcy law were in Chapter 11

but of course, the Bankruptcy legislation had nothing to do with abuses of the law- it was just an excuse give away millions to the banks and credit card companies- brought to you by the Far right and the DLC wing of the Democratic party.

Even if the judge doesn't listen to the workers, maybe the investing class will make a difference:

"Investors in a lawsuit against Delphi also are objecting to the company's compensation plan. The lawsuit alleges Delphi's former managers fraudulently inflated the company's financial results."