The new question of the day is did the Obama administration punish retired non-union Delphi workers by eliminating their pension plans, while “taking care of” the union member’s plans? It would appear that the Daily Caller has emails that indicate that they did.
Emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that the U.S. Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, was the driving force behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 salaried retirees at the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company.
The move, made in 2009 while the Obama administration implemented its auto bailout plan, appears to have been made solely because those retirees were not members of labor unions.
The internal government emails contradict sworn testimony, in federal court and before Congress, given by several Obama administration figures. They also indicate that the administration misled lawmakers and the courts about the sequence of events surrounding the termination of those non-union pensions, and that administration figures violated federal law.
Delphi, a 13-year old company that is independent of General Motors, is one of the world’s largest automotive parts manufacturers. Twenty thousand of its workers lost nearly their entire pensions when the government bailed out GM. At the same time, Delphi employees who were members of the United Auto Workers union saw their pensions topped off and made whole.
If you recall the Boeing plant in South Carolina, the NLRB ruled that Boeing could not expand a factory in South Carolina, costing thousands of jobs. However, the wrinkle that later came out was that the workers at the existing plant there voted to decertify their union, and the NLRB appeared to be punishing them for it.
But, as it is so often, there is more. Lonely Conservative has the information…
What you may not have known is that South Carolina employees de-certified the Machinists union. That’s right – the employees told the union to take a hike. It appears that the NLRB suit against Boeing may just be retaliation on behalf of the Machinists union to punish the employees who kicked them out.
Furthermore, since the union is allegedly still pursuing the [re]unionization of the Charleston employees with a promise that, if they unionize, the union would bring job security to the Charleston employees (inferring that the union would make the case against Boeing would go away if Charleston employees were unionized), this would indicate the union is holding employees’ jobs hostage. If true, this could also be considered unlawful coercion on the part of the union.
Reaching a similar conclusion, last Wednesday, attorneys for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge with the NLRB on behalf of a Charleston employee at Boeing.
And, as we saw straight from Nancy Pelosi, the plant should have been shut down.
So, does this constitute at pattern? In both cases, it appears that the government selectively punished non-union workers. Mind you, at least in the case of the Boeing plant, the workers voted to decertify their union. I thought the Democrats were all for democracy? Apparently, as we’ve often observed, it’s only really “democracy” when the liberals win.
The Democrats have no interest in real democracy, unless it is in their favor. They may protest loudly and proclaim that isn’t the case, but their actions speak much louder than their words. There is much more here than just the appearance of impropriety.
It certainly seems as if the non-union employees were targeted by the federal government, and they denied under oath they had anything to do with this. It now appears as if they provided false testimony and we are looking at yet another scandal.
The Democratic party for Democracy? Never!