The White House pretended to defend American workers this week by presenting fictitious federal job training and “workplace innovation” initiatives. But away from the Beltway dog and pony show, a group of American workers relentlessly attacked by the Obama administration finally gained real support and began to move toward justice.
Five years ago this summer, 20,000 non-union white-collar workers at Delphi (a leading auto parts maker spun off from GM in 1999) had their pensions sabotaged as part of the White House’s rotten deal with Big Labor. Two court decisions this summer gave victims hope. Their hard situation cannot be forgotten.
Remember when Washington rushed to nationalize the U.S. auto industry with $80 billion in taxpayer bailout funds and avoided contentious termination lawsuits? Behind closed doors, the Obama administration’s auto team schemed with United Automobile Workers union bosses to protect union members’ costly retirement funds by defrauding their nonunion counterparts. The federally backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which had a fiduciary duty to represent the best interests of all Delphi workers, helped sacrifice nonunion workers on the altar of the UAW. While union pensions were supplemented with tax-subsidized bailout funds, nonunion retirees remained at a high level.
Additionally, unaffiliated retirees lost all health and life insurance benefits. The harassed employees – most of them from northeastern Ohio, Michigan and neighboring states – spent decades of their lives as secretaries, technicians, engineers and sales associates at Delphi/GM. Some workers had up to 70 percent of their pensions disappear.
Last year, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program confirmed what Delphi employees had maintained all along: they were victims because, in the IG’s words, they had “no influence.” No connections with buddies. No deep pockets. Lack of legal representation during President Obama’s closed-door negotiations with Big Labor donors.
As GOP Rep. Mike Turner put it, the IG report gave the lie to the White House’s claim that it had no influence on the bankruptcy process. “The administration thwarted the bankruptcy process to obtain a politically advantageous outcome,” Turner said. The Treasury Department used “its influence to ensure that the outcome would be politically desirable for the administration, and retired Delphi employees (lost) their pensions.”
Delphi employees fought for five brutal years to force Treasury and the PBGC to reveal the full truth. The scheming feds defied employees’ public records requests and withheld more than 7,000 pages of critical emails and documents from employees who were embroiled in time-consuming litigation that cost millions of dollars.
“For more than four years, taxpayer-funded government lawyers have used every procedural hurdle the law allows to suppress emails and other evidence that the court has ordered us to turn over,” the Delphi Retirees Association explained. “President Obama ignored our direct appeal to order a review of how his Motor Vehicle Task Force handles our pension plan during the Treasury-ordered expedited bankruptcy of GM.”
But here are some rays of hope: Last month, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington ordered the Treasury Department to release documents from Obama’s car team that preceded the end of employee pensions at Delphi. On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Arthur Tarnow in Detroit ruled that the PBGC can no longer process documents requested by Delphi retirees seeking full restoration of their pensions.
Tarnow slammed the feds for dragging their feet: “Since March 9, 2012, PBGC has been subject to a court order to respond to plaintiffs’ discovery requests and has provided only boilerplate objections. Filing formulaic objections to discovery requests is the same as filing no objections at all. The Court strongly condemns the practice of presenting boilerplate objections to every discovery request.” Additionally, the PBGC inspector general agreed to a request from House Republicans to investigate federal delays in determining employee pensions.
Next time Democrats claim to care about American workers, remember the sacrificial sheep of Delphi, their heartache, and their ongoing legal battle against restrictive bureaucrats. Obama’s crony-fueled culture of corruption built this.
