DAYTON, OHIO — Today, Congressman Mike Turner (OH-10), along with U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), held a press conference at his district office in Dayton to highlight their efforts to restore pension payments that the Delphi salaried retirees should have received after they were wrongfully terminated in 2009 via the General Motors government bailout by the Auto Task Force. Last February, Congressman Turner introduced the Susan Muffley Act, bipartisan legislation to restore benefits to over 21,000 Delphi Salaried Retirees, including more than 5,000 Ohioans. Senator Brown has introduced companion legislation for the Susan Muffley Act in the Senate. This legislation passed the House of Representatives last Congress in a vote of 254 to 175.
“In the last Congress, we passed a bill out of the House that would restore the pensions, and it is our hope to build momentum for this bill in the Senate,” said Congressman Mike Turner. “We are sitting with an injustice that has been going on for over a decade. The House has answered that it supports the restoration of the pensions. The administration is in support of the restoration of the pensions. We need to hold the administration accountable for this and move the Senate.”
“Retired Delphi salaried workers lost the retirement they earned, after their company went bankrupt during the Great Recession – when Washington bailed out Wall Street, but left too many Americans on their own,” said Senator Sherrod Brown. “For years, we’ve been fighting to make this right. The Susan Muffley Act is the bipartisan solution Delphi workers deserve, and I will use every tool available to get it done to restore full retirement benefits for the more than 5,000 Ohioans who earned these pensions over a lifetime of work.”
“We fight for our pensions because we earned it,” said Bruce Gump, Chairman of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association. “We deserve them, but it’s not just us. This applies to any situation where somebody is not in an organized group of some sort that can fight back. Is that the kind of America that we want? It’s not what it’s supposed to be. And that's why we fight.”
“All we’re asking for is to return our pension – we earned it, the money’s there, just give it back to us,” said Tom Rose, Member of the Board of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association. “We greatly appreciate the longstanding support of Congressman Turner, who got our bill through the House in the prior Congress, and that’s great. The challenge now shifts to Senator Brown in the Senate. So, we’re confident that with their continued efforts, long-term supporters can find a way to get this done for us.”
“It still affects us every day, and some days are really heavy. You have to decide between taking care of your own health, your house, something that’s broken, or a car problem. Those are problems we live with,” said Mary Miller, Delphi Salaried Retiree. “This is a case of the government deciding we didn’t matter. How can that be? And they can decide it again tomorrow on an issue that’s important to other people. This is important to us today and has been for 15 years. And we have been denied justice for 15 years. Justice delayed is truly justice denied.”
“We just left about 30 retirees and their wives downstairs, and they represent the 20,000. I appreciate both of these guys for coming to meet with them and talk to them,” said Tom Green, Delphi Salaried Retiree. “There’s a lot us, including Mary – she’s back out working 15 years later, after retiring. Personally, I’m still doing that 15 years later, so that you can go do what you expect to be able to do during retirement. We appreciate what these guys are going to do. We’re here to help them, but we need to get it done this year.”
Background:
The Susan Muffley Act provides backpay for the pension payments that should have been received for the past 15 years via a lump sum payment equivalent to the difference between any benefits that have been paid out and what retirees would have been paid without limitations, plus 6 percent interest. It would also restore full pension payments going forward as if never disrupted. There are more than 21,000 Delphi retirees impacted by this legislation, with approximately 5,180 retirees residing in Ohio.
In 1998, Delphi, a car parts manufacturer, was acquired by General Motors (GM). As part of GM’s government bailout in 2009, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) took trusteeship of Delphi employees’ pensions at the direction of the Obama Administration.
One group employed by Delphi was a category of 21,000 salaried employees, including those who worked at the company’s plant in Dayton. Retirement benefits for these employees included a single-employer pension. GM decided to close the plant and voluntarily terminate the fully funded pension of the salaried employees. At that point, the PBGC became the sole trustee of the plan, slashing pensions of the Delphi Salaried Retirees by up to 70%. The salaried employees then formed the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association (DSRA).
Since then, Congressman Turner has been working closely with the DSRA to restore their benefits throughout the Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations.
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