Posted by Tina
The Daily Caller
reports that a bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Joe Leiberman and Mike Turner, have sent a letter to the House oversight committee asking that they expand current probes into the Delphi Pension scandal involving the Department of the Treasury and the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation:
“We are writing to request that the committees which you chair submit additional requests for documents from the Department of the Treasury and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) on matters pertaining to the unjust termination of Delphi salaried retiree pensions in the federal government’s bailout of General Motors,” the lawmakers wrote. “As you may know, the pensions of Delphi salaried retirees were significantly reduced in the aftermath of the bailout, while their union counterparts were made whole. These retirees, regardless of labor affiliation or not, spent their careers working alongside one another and should not be treated differently in their retirement. This decision of the Auto Task Force, Treasury, and the PBGC continues to affect roughly 20,000 current and future retirees across the nation.”
The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation is a government insurance agency that was created for the explicit purpose of protecting workers pensions.They have a fiduciary responsibility to represent pensioners interests independently. The Daily Caller cites the following from its charter:
29 U.S.C. 1342 maintains that the PBGC is the only government entity that is legally empowered to initiate termination of a pension or make any official movements toward doing so.
Twenty thousand Delphi workers were adversely affected by the final arrangements of the GM bailout.
“These retirees, regardless of labor affiliation or not, spent their careers working alongside one another and should not be treated differently in their retirement.”
Maybe they shouldn’t. But if that’s going to change, it’s them, the lawmakers, who are going to have to change it. As it stands, GM employees own their pension fund, through their union. Alas and unhappily, Delphi’s employees did not. It was an asset of the company, and went into the pot with the rest of the company’s assets in bankruptcy. That’s the law.
Remember back, in the 80s, I think, when Emporium employees lost their pension fund because the Emporium put all the fund assets into company stock and then went bust. Same deal. The Enron enployees met a similar fate.
This has been going on for some time. But our lawmakers seem disinclined to deal with it. They’d rather write politically inflamatory letters to no purpose, except, of course, for the headlines.
But all the headlines demonstrate is what an ignorant bunch of do-nothing schmucks they all are.