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Wicker and Boehner Continue to Seek Answers
for Delphi Retirees
WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Congressman John
Boehner (R-Ohio) today highlighted the initial phase of a Government
Accountability Office (GAO) non-partisan, independent analysis of the
federal financial assistance provided to the General Motors (GM)
Corporation and its treatment of non-unionized Delphi retirees.
The report contains a specific timeline of the events that transpired.
“This is an important step in learning why Delphi retirees were treated
differently than their union counterparts,” said WICKER. “After
reviewing GAO’s initial timeline of events, it is clear that the unions
received unjust preferential treatment. I am confident that
further GAO reports will clearly lay out the reasons why this happened.”
“This report deepens my concern about the way the federal government
treated these retirees,” said BOEHNER. “Senator Wicker and I have
demanded that the government explain why non-unionized Delphi retirees
were treated differently than their union counterparts at GM.
This report makes it more evident than ever that there was preferential
treatment given to the unions at the expense of Delphi retirees.
The Delphi retirees deserve an explanation for this, and they deserve
accountability.”
GM received more than $70 billion in taxpayer funding to keep the
company afloat. Under the Obama administration, the federal
government acquired a 60 percent ownership of GM following the
company’s bankruptcy proceedings. Additionally, the United Auto
Workers Union received a 17.5 percent ownership in the auto
manufacturer. Many are concerned that the federal government,
acting through GM, picked winners and losers in the GM bankruptcy
proceedings. Pension agreements are altered routinely during
bankruptcy proceedings, but in the GM case, certain pension
beneficiaries were protected during the process while others were not.
A link to the initial GAO report can be found here. In addition
to the phase one report, GAO plans to release a final report at the end
of this year that will investigate why unionized Delphi retirees were
treated differently than their non-unionized counterparts.
The GAO report will be coordinated with a report from the Special
Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP).
The SIGTARP audit will examine if any outside political influence from
the Obama Administration played a role in keeping unionized pensions
whole while non-unionized pensions were not.
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