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By Doug Cunningham

Ninety-five percent of Delphi’s UAW members have voted to authorize a strike at the giant auto parts maker. That gives UAW national leaders the power to call a strike if one becomes necessary in the union’s struggle to defend manufacturing wage and benefits standards at Delphi. Delphi has asked a bankruptcy court for authority to throw out its union contracts and the UAW has said if that happens a strike will, too. The IUE-CWA at Delphi has also voted to authorize a strike. Delphi is out to destroy more than 20,000 good-paying union manufacturing jobs in the U.S. so it can make auto parts in cheap overseas labor markets like China. It filed bankruptcy to carry out that plan. Its overseas factories – paid for by U.S. workers - are exempt from the bankruptcy.