By Doug Cunningham

Delphi’s assault on auto industry manufacturing wages and benefit standards isn’t stopping with the attrition buyout reached between GM and the UAW. Unless the UAW agrees to sharply lower wages and benefits by March 30th, Delphi still intends to file a bankruptcy court motion to destroy its union contracts. Greg Shotwell, a Delphi worker in Michigan, says the fight is still on to protect the auto industry’s good wage and benefits structure. And what’s needed, he says, is a comprehensive agreement that protects workers collectively.

[Shotwell] : “We need a comprehensive solution in the sense that it would cover wages, protect jobs, pensions, benefits, health care, everything.”

In 1985 GM had 375,000 North American autoworkers. In 2005 it was down to 113,000. Productivity soared in that 20-year period. The net effect of this early retirement/attrition buyout deal will be to drive down auto industry wages and benefits. For generations that wage and benefits structure has lifted workers into the middle class while putting upward pressure on other manufacturing wages and benefits. For workers, the collapse of that auto industry wage and benefits structure means lower living standards, degraded health care, and far less retirement security.