If you want another sign pointing to the attack against the middle class and a decent standard of living, look no further than what’s happening at Delphi. Apparently, there is some deal to cut wages at Delphi, according to The New York Times: 

The Delphi Corporation and its largest union reached a tentative wage-cutting agreement on Friday that the auto supplier called a “significant milestone” toward its emergence from bankruptcy protection.

Members of the United Automobile Workers union could vote as soon as next week on the deal, which was struck about a month before the U.A.W. is scheduled to begin negotiations on a new contract with Detroit automakers.

Neither Delphi nor the U.A.W. released any details of the deal; workers will gather Monday at their plants to find out how they will be affected.

   If the company is calling this a milestone, it spells trouble.

   When Delphi first went after the UAW workers, it was demanding a cut in wages from about $27 per hour down to $12.50. The Times’ reports that “The deal reportedly requires hourly wages of at least $14.” Even at that level or be charitable and say a buck or two more, the slashing of the workers’ wages by nearly fifty percent is a sign of the times we live in.

   Remember that the business strategy of the company’s CEO Robert Miller is quite simple: he buys up struggling companies and turns them around using one central strategy–dumping the company’s pensions plans, ususally on to the federal government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. At the same time that UAW members are taking a hit, Miller makes sure to compensate his executives and himself quite lavishly. A long time ago, I pointed to a Wall Street Journal article that reported:

Under its proposed employee-compensation plan, Delphi would allocate $21.8 million for cash bonuses to executives during the first six months of bankruptcy, and then an additional $87.9 million for 486 U.S. executives who would receive 30% to 250% of their salaries once Delphi emerges from bankruptcy.

There is then a severance package under which Delphi’s top 21 officers would collect up to 18 months’ salary and target bonuses, 89 other executives would get a year’s salary and bonuses, and 373 officials would receive a year’s pay.

The most potentially lucrative element of the compensation plan is a proposal to give Delphi’s top 600 world-wide executives 10% of the equity in the reorganized company, a stake the unions estimate could be worth $400 million.

  I believe that the above obscenity was revised a bit after it became publicly known. But the basic outline is the same: screw the average worker but make sure a few execs are paid well. Long live the free market.