Delphi(The whole country should be angry about this)

getitgoin

Member
Apr 29, 2008
52
0
December 05, 2005
The Impunity of Corporate Thieves

What judge in his right mind, conservative or liberal, would reward corporate executives who have run a company into the ground with something called a Key Employee Compensation Plan that provides for millions of dollars in incentives for them while they work their way through Chapter 11 bankrupcty. It's theft of the worst kind. No accountability or responsibility for their corporate and managerial failures. Just let them keep on stealing the company's money, exploiting the workers, and robbing the stockholders. Read on.....
**************

Delphi attacks workers and spoils execs
CEO Miller should stop the insults, negotiate equitable plan with UAW
by Ron Gettelfinger

Suppose your employer was in serious financial trouble. Would you be willing to make sacrifices to keep the company going? If you were confident the sacrifices would be shared equitably from top to bottom – and that everyone would be rewarded fairly when the company got back on its feet – you probably would.

But what if your company's chief executive wanted to cut your pay and benefits by more than 60 percent, while giving a select group of executives, including many who steered the company into the ditch, bonuses and stock potentially worth more than $500 million? And what if some top executives were in line for bonuses totaling $21.5 million for the first six months the company was in bankruptcy?

And what if your boss, who'd been on the job just five months, spent much of his time jetting around the country doing interviews with Business Week, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and other media in which he declared the company's biggest problem is that workers like you are grossly overpaid while top executives are woefully underpaid?

Chances are you'd be insulted, outraged and flat-out disgusted.

Of course, no chief executive in his right mind would ever really do those things, right? Wrong.

Delphi Chief Executive Robert S. "Steve" Miller is doing all that and more.

In his many media interviews, Miller has told Delphi's hourly workers (and all blue-collar working Americans) that the American Dream is a thing of the past unless you're as smart and powerful as, well, Steve Miller and his army of high-priced bankruptcy lawyers and restructuring consultants.

Miller's first contract proposal to the UAW would have slashed the wages of production workers to $9.50 an hour, which works out to $19,760 a year – barely above the official U.S. poverty level of $19,197 for a family of four. His second proposal was only marginally better: $10.50 an hour, rising to $12.50 over two years. Plenty of people, Miller says, get by on these wages.
Maybe Miller should try it. He's made a lot of noise about taking only $1 a year starting Jan. 1, but my guess is that he'll "get by" on his $3 million signing bonus and $750,000 salary for July-December of this year. By the way, at $10.50 an hour, a Delphi worker would have to work 171 years to match Miller's $3.75 million for six months on the job.

And rest assured, Delphi executives won't have to worry about getting by. The company has filed with the federal bankruptcy court a proposed "Key Employee Compensation Plan" that, among other things, would give an unspecified number of Delphi executives "incentive bonuses" totaling $43 million during the two years Delphi expects to be in Chapter 11 reorganization.

An additional $88 million would go to Delphi's top 500 executives when the company emerges from bankruptcy or its assets are sold off at fire sale prices. In other words, they get the money whether Delphi survives or dies. If it does emerge from bankruptcy, fewer than 600 "key employees" will get 10 percent of the shares in the "new" Delphi.

In other words, while Miller is intent on kicking Delphi's hourly workers out of the middle class, he's just as intent on lavishly rewarding the people at the top for, well, presiding over things like accounting irregularities and Delphi stock plummeting to 33 cents a share.

The UAW and other unions are fighting Delphi's obscene "pay for failure" plan in court. And we're not alone; the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the U.S. bankruptcy trustee, and shareholder and bondholder groups have filed complaints, too.

Delphi's "key employees" aren't the only ones who stand to make millions through the company's bankruptcy. On Wednesday, The Detroit News detailed the flood of money from Delphi to law firms, investment bankers and consultants.

A few highlights: Delphi's lead law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, was paid $9.85 million before Delphi filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 8; the firm's lead attorney bills Delphi $835 an hour. The investment banking firm Rothschild & Co. is in line for a $15 million "completion fee" when Delphi completes its reorganization plan.

Miller has called Delphi "a flash point, a test case, for all the economic and social trends that are on a collision course in our country and around the globe." I agree, though for very different reasons.

If Miller's vision of America's future gains wider acceptance by corporate and government leaders, we're all in deep trouble because his vision is an America sharply divided between a super-rich elite and the working poor, with no middle class as we know it today.

Make no mistake: The UAW is willing to work with Delphi to craft a fair and equitable plan to get the company back on track, just as we've worked with Chrysler, Navistar, Ford, General Motors and other companies to solve tough problems.

We've proven we can do it. Now, it's up to Steve Miller to stop his counterproductive attack on workers, their families and our communities and negotiate in good faith.

This article was reprinted from the UAW website and first appeared on Dec. 2, 2005, in the Detroit News’ Labor Voices.

posted by Stephen McArthur at Monday, December 05, 2005
 
Gettelfinger should share the blame with his union 'leadership' team -- if they were so smart (or even realistic) they could've prepared their membership instead of watching Wagoner drive the GM bus off the cliff.

Yes. Off the cliff. GM will certainly file Ch11 before they begin to turn it around. Later this year.

How does Wagoner keep his job? Must have the same employment contract as Jake Brace.

Not excusing the absurd pay packages the execs have awarded themselves. Simply they took what the market offered them, same as anyone else. Including the unions who for years kept 72 year-old members on the payroll passing out gloves and collecting $80K per year whilst their young union bretheren were laid off. Those guys were the future and they are long gone.

I like Gettefinger and realize he is playing to his base. But I wonder if the union's employees at Solidarity House took the same financial hit as their members.
 
To your post....getitgoin,

(Think) CAPITALISM at ANY CO$T, with a large "side order" of corperate GREED,...made VERY possible by the VERMIN (administration) "handed" power in 2000, by a majority Supreme Court", who were ALL appointed by REPUG's(presidents)

When the soil is just right, you can "grow" this kind of SEWERAGE !!


AH,...but not all...will be Lost.

Their is a NEW Farmer coming , who will "take over the soil", and "plow UNDER" the "USELESS CROPS" that currently grow there !
 
The unions know these options are there..........and they know the company will go this route.....knowing this then,why do the unions let it go the distance?

UAW didn't give much in recent neg's.......you reap what you sow.

New ballgame these days.....thats for sure.Have unions let the college boys one up them time and time again?Unions seem to be very unprepared these days......living in the past if you ask me.Too many old union smacks living in the past and languishing around for that big fat lifestyle and pension you and I gave them.
 
The unions know these options are there..........and they know the company will go this route.....knowing this then,why do the unions let it go the distance?

UAW didn't give much in recent neg's.......you reap what you sow.

New ballgame these days.....thats for sure.Have unions let the college boys one up them time and time again?Unions seem to be very unprepared these days......living in the past if you ask me.Too many old union smacks living in the past and languishing around for that big fat lifestyle and pension you and I gave them.
The "business model" which the U.S. (so called) labor movement follows is "business unionism."
Real unionism and union people were purged from the unions at the beggining. Samuel Gompers himself shilled for "the man." The AFL he created succesfully quashed anyone perceived to be a radical. The death blow to unionism in the U.S. came with the merger of the AFL with the CIO, back in the 1955. As a true unionist Mike Quill (who must be rolling in his grave at seeing what his TWU has turned into) opposed the merger because the AFL's racist policies and because he knew such a merger would be detrimental to the working man.
So you see delldude, the "college boys" as you call them, or "the man" as I call the capitalist system has been in charge all along, playing both sides of the field, playing the working man against himself and making a hefty profit while doing so.
 
As the unions do have a vested interest in your continuing membership at all costs.Like paying their own empires costs......not making valiant stands in the name of unionism.Which BTW could change the face of management/union relations and cost thousands of jobs.....but change,if you want it comes with a cost.
 
As the unions do have a vested interest in your continuing membership at all costs.Like paying their own empires costs......not making valiant stands in the name of unionism.Which BTW could change the face of management/union relations and cost thousands of jobs.....but change,if you want it comes with a cost.

:up:
B) UT
 
December 05, 2005
The Impunity of Corporate Thieves

What judge in his right mind, conservative or liberal, would reward corporate executives who have run a company into the ground with something called a Key Employee Compensation Plan that provides for millions of dollars in incentives for them while they work their way through Chapter 11 bankrupcty. It's theft of the worst kind. No accountability or responsibility for their corporate and managerial failures. Just let them keep on stealing the company's money, exploiting the workers, and robbing the stockholders. Read on.....
**************

Delphi attacks workers and spoils execs
CEO Miller should stop the insults, negotiate equitable plan with UAW
by Ron Gettelfinger

.....

Reevaluate this issue before you get pissed. This story is old (2005). Not only is it old; it is no longer the case. Congress changed the law shortly after Delphi filed for bankruptcy.

Now, you cannot simply pay a "key employee compensation" retention plan bonus to stay with the company through bankruptcy. Management -- and the employee -- would have to show certain criteria that is nearly impossible to satisfy in order to pay a true "key employee" plan (I don't think many management teams have satisfied that since the law changed).

Now, instead of a "key employee" retention plan, courts allow an "incentive" based bonus program. It requires management to create numerous targets/goals for the reorganized company. Simply put, the company must satisfy an in depth performance metric before any such bonuses are paid. Payments are tied to performance objectives (what an idea?).

This new law may help satisfy, in part, UAW's statement that it "is willing to work with [the compnay] to craft a fair and equitable plan to get the company back on track."
 
Reevaluate this issue before you get pissed. This story is old (2005). Not only is it old; it is no longer the case. Congress changed the law shortly after Delphi filed for bankruptcy.

Now, you cannot simply pay a "key employee compensation" retention plan bonus to stay with the company through bankruptcy. Management -- and the employee -- would have to show certain criteria that is nearly impossible to satisfy in order to pay a true "key employee" plan (I don't think many management teams have satisfied that since the law changed).

Now, instead of a "key employee" retention plan, courts allow an "incentive" based bonus program. It requires management to create numerous targets/goals for the reorganized company. Simply put, the company must satisfy an in depth performance metric before any such bonuses are paid. Payments are tied to performance objectives (what an idea?).

This new law may help satisfy, in part, UAW's statement that it "is willing to work with [the compnay] to craft a fair and equitable plan to get the company back on track."

Yea, and what 'precedence' do you have? My research says 'none'! Just another timken law that has more pork than substance.
B) UT
 
Yea, and what 'precedence' do you have? My research says 'none'! Just another timken law that has more pork than substance.
B) UT

DANA. The first plan was rejected because it was too similar to a retention plan. HOMEBANC. Countless others have been approved by courts that are incentive based (albeit that the plan may also have a retentive effect). These new plans effectively stop the "pay for failure" that the original poster and original article rally against. See also the PTS case where the union strike forced the company to close its doors... the insiders will NOT get the bonus payments they had requested because the company failed to emerge from bankruptcy.

Many courts now request some type of backing from the creditor's committee (if possible) before the incentive plan is approved... which represents most unsecured creditors in the bankruptcy (including any workers or employee groups that hold non-ordinary course type unsecured claims).
 
Just another timken law that has more pork than substance.
B) UT


UAL,

We may be getting even more substance than the BAPCPA changes. Obama is proposing changes to bankruptcy laws. He wants to speed up the process, help military families and protect people from natural disasters in Bankruptcy. Most notably, however, Obama may propose to ban executive bonuses for bankruptcy companies and require disclosure of all pension investments.