Delphi offers buyouts, hopes to derail resistance

If you and your best buddy are both flat broke, pooling your resources won’t make the two of you rich. Zero plus zero equals zero. The equation changes, however, when it involves two supposedly broke giant corporations: General Motors and Delphi.

Earlier this year General Motors, citing major losses, demanded and won concessions from the United Auto Workers — contractual raises were canceled and retir ees’ health benefits were cut. As a thank-you present the company announced plans to cut 35,000 jobs. Yet the same executives who were so desperate to cut costs suddenly found billions of dollars to entice thousands of workers — with bribes running from $35,000 to $140,000 — to quit or retire.

Now GM has come to the aid of its former parts division Delphi, which has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy since last October. Some 20,000 Delphi workers facing job cuts will be offered the same “Special Attrition Program” packages as GM workers.

Gregg Shotwell, an organizer of the rank-and- file group Soldiers of Soli darity, points out that “the SAP is not a comprehensive collective-bargaining solution. The SAP is not a union solution; it’s the bosses’ solution. The SAP helps GM-Delphi accomplish the downsizing, outsourcing, and downward spiral commonly known as whipsawing with a minimum of resistance. The SAP decimates solidarity, isolates the embattled, and mitigates expense to the companies.”

The UAW leadership is backing the deal, but Delphi has not backed off its aggressive stance towards the UAW. Del phi is not withdrawing its petition asking the bankruptcy judge to throw out the union contracts altogether. Delphi has fired union leaders and rank-and-file mem bers of UAW Local 696 in Dayton, Ohio.

Workers willing to fight

If GM/Delphi has billions to coax workers to give up their jobs without a fight, they must be lying when they claim they can’t afford to pay union wages and benefits. The workers know this. Last month, UAW members voted overwhelmingly to strike if Delphi voided their contracts—96 percent were in favor with some locals vot ing almost unanimously to walk out. Months earlier, members of the Inter national Union of Electrical Workers/ Com munication Workers of America voted similarly. Since last year, workers have been engaged in work-to-rule slowdowns under the leadership of Soldiers of Solidarity.

How to take the fight to the next level? This should be foremost on the agenda of the UAW Constitutional Convention taking place this week. Nothing is more critical for the future of the union than mobilizing its hundreds of thousands of members in a life- and- death fight for jobs, the union wage scale, health benefits and pensions, not to mention getting the fired Dayton workers reinstated.