More than ten years after 20,000 workers for the auto parts supplier, Delphi Corporation, had their pensions slashed as a result of the Obama-Biden administration’s auto bailout of General Motors (GM), President Trump is considering restoring the pensions.
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 non-unionized 20,0000 Delphi workers. In some cases, workers had their pensions gutted by 30 to 70 percent.
Three years later, federal documents unveiled how the Obama-Biden administration’s Treasury Department worked to gut the pensions of the Delphi workers despite repeated claims that it was the sole decision of the PBGC.
A federal report in 2013 detailed that the Delphi workers would likely have their pensions cut by an estimated $440 million.
Since 2009, the Delphi workers have been fighting to restore their pensions, taking their case through unsuccessful court battles. Now, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) says Trump may intervene to return the pensions that the Obama-Biden administration helped slash.
“This week I again spoke to President Trump about the Delphi Salaried Retirees’ fight for their pensions. President Trump understands that the Obama Administration unjustly terminated these pensions,” Turner said in a statement.
“He is now considering intervening on behalf of the Retirees’ in this over decade-long fight,” Turner said. “I will continue to advocate for these Retirees, as I have since 2009 when the Obama Administration wrongly took the pensions they had worked for and earned.”
Likewise, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro confirmed Trump is considering all of his options in restoring the Delphi workers’ pensions.
Navarro said in a statement:
The Obama-Biden non-solution to the GM bankruptcy was to help offshore Delphi operations to Mexico and China while stripping the pensions from Delphi’s hardworking Salaried Retirees. We are looking at every legal option available to remedy this Obama-Biden betrayal. This issue has the President’s attention.
Den Black, Board Chair of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association, told Breitbart News that he hopes Trump can help, noting the toll that slashed pensions took on the Delphi workers.
“People were in their 50s and 60s at the time — they can’t start over,” Black said. “It was just egregious to people who worked hard and played by the rules.”
“Mr. Trump may be able to get this done,” Black said.
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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