“The least powerful group was always going to get screwed,” said U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, committee chairman.
In particular, committee members and retirees asked how this could happen when GM had been supported by more than $52 billion in taxpayer funds by March 2010. The federal government helped GM emerge from bankruptcy in 2009. GM is the largest customer of Delphi, which itself left bankruptcy about four months after GM.
“To me, clearly, the Delphi pensions plans were an obstacle to getting GM out of bankruptcy,” testified Washington Twp. resident Tom Rose, a Delphi retiree who spent 30 years of his career working for GM and nine years working for Delphi.
“The taxpayer dollars of every Delphi salaried retiree were used in a process that discriminated against you,” committee member U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, said to applause from a standing-room-only audience at Sinclair Community College’s Smith Auditorium.
For salaried retirees — including an estimated 700 in the Dayton area — the issue is one of economic survival.
“Those who haven’t suffered economic wreckage yet will most certainly suffer in the next decade or two, should they be unfortunate enough to live that long,” said Den Black, interim chair of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association and a Piqua native.
The DSRA is suing the U.S. Treasury Department among others in federal court to have their full pensions restored.
“We are spending money that we don’t have to fight a government that has our money,” said Chuck Cunningham, a former Delphi executive.
Questioning became most pointed when committee members had Vincent Snowbarger, PBGC deputy director for operations and former PBGC acting director, before them. They asked Snowbarger if PBGC leaders understood that post-bankruptcy GM was going to invest $2.5 billion into Delphi in June 2009. Two months earlier, Snowbarger had signed off on “terminating” Delphi’s pensions, determining that the pensions no longer had a viable sponsor.
“I don’t know that we did anticipate that,” Snowbarger said.
Snowbarger testified that different treatment of different pensions was a result of decisions made by GM, but committee members rejected that explanation, given that the federal government was helping GM.
“We don’t buy that, and no one in this room buys that, that there was an independent GM,” Turner told Snowbarger.
Retirees appreciated the chance to talk about the issue and the committee’s attention to it. “There’s a lot that’s coming out,” said Jaci Rose, wife of Tom Rose.
Turner said the issue came down to two questions: “Where is the money, and how do we get it back?”
Added Issa: “Quite frankly, we have to figure out how to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
“We believe these (decisions) were politically motivated,” testified Steve Gebbia, a former Delphi human resources executive. “Unfortunately, we didn’t have the connections.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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