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Protests Well Up as Delphi Workers
Ponder Cuts
By
Micheline Maynard and Jeremy W. Peters, The New York Times
December
14, 2005
First, Robert S. Miller, the chief executive of Delphi, had his turn to capture the public spotlight, looking for deep cuts from unions.
Now, workers at Delphi, the bankrupt auto parts supplier, are having their say against Mr. Miller's demands - on picket lines, in drafty union halls and on their bodies.
On Thursday, workers in Dayton, Ohio, plan to wear red clothing to their factories, symbolizing the wages and benefits they say will bleed away if the company wins its demand for sharply lower wages and benefits.
It is the most visible symbol yet of a grass-roots protest that is spreading among workers in cities like Toledo, Ohio; Kokomo, Ind.; and Rochester, home to plants with futures clouded by Delphi's bankruptcy filing in October.
Nowhere is the concern deeper than in western Michigan, where the company's initial demand for wages as low as $9.50 an hour, versus the $27 an hour workers now receive, provoked outrage at plants in Wyoming and Coopersville, both outside of Grand Rapids, Mich.
Workers at the two factories have joined forces to fuel the protests, holding meetings and staging informational picketing.
"You don't do a job like this all your life because you like it," Tom Mitchell, 49, a repairman at the Wyoming plant, said Tuesday. "You do it because there are rewards. And that's what they want to take away from us."
Jack White, president of the United Automobile Workers local at the plant, said workers were demanding fairness. "It boils down to promises made, promises kept," said Mr. White, 53. "And that's really what I have heartburn about."
Such complaints may matter little in the courtroom, where the fate of Delphi workers will ultimately be decided. Once in bankruptcy, a company has the right to ask a judge to set aside its labor contracts and allow it to put sharply lower terms in place, if it can prove the action is vital to the company's survival.
In fact, Mr. Miller said last month that persuading a judge to do that was "a slam-dunk," given that other parts companies pay their workers much less.
But analysts said the protests were helping workers deal with a completely unfamiliar situation in an industry where labor negotiations have long centered on how much more a company can pay, not how much workers are willing to give up.
"At least you can make some noise," said James P. Womack, an author and consultant on efficiency matters. "At least you can shout a bit."
"We've gone beyond the charted ocean where everybody understood what an iceberg was and what a supertanker was and what a whale was," Mr. Womack said. "Now there are all kinds of creatures leaping out of the water and nobody knows what these creatures are."
There are some signs that Mr. Miller, known as an overhaul specialist, is paying attention. On Tuesday, he told a news conference in Tokyo that he expected to reach agreements with Delphi's unions during the first quarter, and had set a Jan. 20 deadline for concluding the talks.
Last week, Mr. Miller told The Wall Street Journal that Delphi was preparing its third proposal to the U.A.W. The company backed off from its first two contract offers, when union leaders flatly refused to make counterproposals to what they deemed "obscene" cuts.
Perhaps emboldened by their members' protests against Delphi, U.A.W. leaders have been much more public than in recent years, lately holding news conferences and giving interviews in which they have repeatedly denounced Mr. Miller and the company's efforts to slice wages and benefits.
Officials warn that the union could use its ultimate weapon - a walkout - if Mr. Miller persists in seeking deep cuts. Richard Shoemaker, the U.A.W. vice president in charge of talks with Delphi, said this week that the union was "keeping all of our options open," including a strike.
At the Delphi plant in Wyoming, workers are particularly upset that Mr. Miller accepted a $3 million signing bonus and $1.5 million in annual salary when he became Delphi's chief executive in July, not long before he began demanding that they cut their pay. Mr. Miller later said he would accept only $1 in salary for 2006.
"Give me $3 million and I'll work the next three years for a dollar," said Herb Benedict, 60, a screw machine operator and a local union official. "I'd be able to retire pretty good. Some sacrifice, huh?"
Others said they felt slighted by Mr. Miller. "Everybody in here is looking at it like this guy doesn't care about us," said Dave Musselman, 48, a machine repairman with 28 years of seniority. "He couldn't care less about the people on the floor."
Mr. White, the union local president, added: "Saying, 'I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down,' is not the right approach. That's not going to resolve anything. All that's going to do is put the two parties that much farther apart."
Those wounded feelings, and the protests that they are fueling, ultimately could have a significant impact not only on the union's talks with Delphi, but also on the public's perception of the battle between Delphi and its unions, Mr. Womack said.
"At some point it becomes rather more emotional and political, rather than fact-based and using logic about where this has to end up," Mr. Womack said.
Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting from Wyoming, Mich., for this article.
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