Delphi Salaried Retirees Association (DSRA) Chairman Bruce Gump today applauded Congressional Representatives Mike Turner (R‑Ohio), Dan Kildee (D‑Mich.), Claudia Tenney (R‑N.Y.) and Gwen Moore (D‑Wisc.) for their bipartisan plans to resubmit the Susan Muffley Act legislation to the 118th Congress to recover the pension plan for nearly 20,000 Delphi Salaried Retirees. Their pension plan had been terminated in 2009 during the unprecedented involvement of the US Treasury in the auto Industry, and without any representation for the salaried workers.

Gump pointed out that retirees are senior citizens who depend on their earned pensions in retirement.  “In nearly 14 years, we have lost many of them.  They did not live to see the full pensions they earned.  Their surviving spouses and families continue to suffer the effects of the loss of up to 70 percent of earned and promised pensions.  There is much more to tell and for legislators to understand about this pension recovery!  Some have called the effort a ‘bailout’ but the retirees are only asking the Federal Government to restore their pensions.”

Senate negotiations for inclusion of the Susan Muffley Act in the Omnibus bill stalled in December and failed to include House-passed Susan Muffley Act.  Had there been Senate agreement, the 13‑year pension nightmare would have come to an end.

“The government picked winners and losers in the auto industry crisis of 2009. They singled out Delphi salaried retirees for harsh treatment, deeming us as too small and too weak to fight back.  It was a very disheartening day when one Auto Task Force member said our retirees had ‘no commercial necessity.’  While actions took place to assure certain union-represented Delphi workers and retirees received their full earned pensions, the government treated our group differently — something that has never happened before.”

“As one congressional supporter told us more than a decade ago, ‘Government broke it, government can fix it!’” Gump declared.”

 
SIGTARP report confirms unprecedented government action

In a report in 2013, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) in reviewing the government intervention said, “An important lesson Government officials should learn from the Government’s unprecedented TARP intervention is that actions and decisions must represent the overarching responsibilities the Government owes to the American public.” (SIGTARP‑13-003, page‑41)

In citing that unequal treatment of people, Gump added that options existed in 2009 that would have kept the viable pension plan continuing without assumption by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).  “The Susan Muffley Act if passed – the President said he would sign it into law – would correct the Treasury’s Auto Team errors.  This bill is a pension recovery.  It simply restores the pensions earned by salaried retirees of Delphi.”

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