Others with certain family situations — such as provisions ensuring that a spouse will receive part of a pension — expect to see their pensions cut soon.
“We’ve moved to a new stage here,” said Den Black , 63, a Piqua native who heads the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association.
For retirees who spent most of their careers working for General Motors — and yet are still classified as Delphi retirees — the cuts are a bitter pill.
Kettering resident Tom Rose, 63, who spent 30 years of his 39-year career with GM, said his pension has been cut by 40 percent.
“I’ll have to go back to work at some point,” Rose said.
Jerry Biersack — a 60-year-old who worked for GM for more than 27 years and Delphi for less than three — is looking at a 25 percent cut. The Beavercreek resident is in the same boat as Rose, expecting to have to find work “to at least offset what I’ve just lost here.”
Last year, Delphi shed health care and life insurance obligations to salaried retirees and released all pensions to the PBGC. That means about 1,000 salaried Delphi employees in the Dayton area must live on reduced pensions while paying their own health insurance.
Salaried Delphi retirees watched as hourly Delphi retirees kept some health benefits and some pension support from GM. They watched as salaried GM counterparts keep full pensions, if not health benefits.
Mary Miller, 59, of Washington Twp., expects to lose more than half of her pension in a few months.
Miller, a former GM human resources manager, is building her own company, MTM Transformation Coaching. She isn’t sure what to expect.
“I couldn’t even live on it,” Miller said of her reduced pension.
In response, the DSRA is suing the PBGC, the U.S. Treasury Department and the federal Automotive Task Force among others to regain full pensions, a benefit for which they worked decades. A federal judge in Detroit has directed the PBGC to place lost pension amounts in escrow — a move that gives retirees some hope that their case has merit.
“It’s extremely powerful and indicative,” Black said.
Said Rose, “It’s David vs. Goliath here.”
A Washington, D.C., attorney representing the DSRA referred questions to another attorney, who couldn’t be reached for comment.
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