November 23, 2005

Delphi Chief Fights Battle of Detroit - New York Times

$64/hour! The good times are obviously over when the sum of all previous labor negotiations, driven in no small measure by the cost increases in health care and the desire to keep labor peace, has produced compensation for factory workers at this rate. Can it be any secret why foreign auto companies are eating the lunch of GM and the other major U.S. auto manufacturers?

"'Somebody had to do this,' Mr. Miller said in an interview last weekend. 'If I have ended up where I am, the one who has to be a leader for change, I'll keep talking.'

He is doing plenty of that. Next month, Delphi is expected to ask a federal bankruptcy judge for permission to terminate contracts paying $64 an hour in wages and benefits combined, so that it can impose sharply lower rates.

Otherwise, says Mr. Miller, a veteran turnaround expert who took over Delphi in July, all of Delphi's 34,000 hourly jobs in the United States are at risk."


Make no mistake, Miller, if he's successful will make barrels of money personally...aah, the capitalist system at work.

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