Salaried Packard retirees express betrayal over transfer of pensions

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Violet Jasinski

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Fran Spain

By Ed Runyan

After the meeting, some retirees headed straight to U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan’s office.

WARREN — Violet Jasinski of Howland worked 32 years as a salaried employee at Delphi Packard Electric, retiring in 2003 as a quality engineer, and felt comfortable that she could live on the Delphi pension she had coming.

Six years later, at age 56, she’s looking at her pension dropping by around half — to around $2,200 per month — as a result of the decision by the federal government to transfer her pension to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

She’s not sure how she can live on so much less.

“Those under 65 years old — we could lose a lot,” she said, adding that finding a job now to make up the difference is likely to be very difficult. “What do you do?” she asked.

“Being a salaried employee in some ways was not a benefit,” Jasinski said. “You put up with a lot of things that union people did not.

“Why? Because you knew what your pension would be at the end, and now it’s not there. It’s been ripped out. You trusted your company, and they let you down,” she said.

Jasinski said Delphi sent notices to her every fall letting her know just how much retirement benefits she had accrued and how much she would receive. The notices are a promise, Jasinski said, but now they look like a broken promise.

Jasinski and fellow retiree Fran Spain of Warren spoke about their plight on their way out of a meeting of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association Thursday at the Sunrise Inn on East Market Street.

The projected reduction in Jasinski’s pension will be in addition to the elimination of her health insurance that occurred in April. She now pays $666 per month to keep similar insurance to what the company provided before April.

Spain, also 56, said she waited until last August to retire after 36 years with the company, working in sales.

After considering retirement for quite a few years, she decided the time was right last year after looking at the pension she would get.

“And now this,” she said.

Jasinski and Spain were among about 100 salaried retirees, spouses and interested parties who attended the meeting. Salaried employees include engineers, managers and foremen. There are about 1,500 Ohio Delphi retirees affected by the PBGC takeover, around 600 of them from within a couple miles of Warren, said salaried retiree group member Bruce Gump.

Delphi’s local plants also have about 10,000 hourly retirees who are affected by expected cuts in pensions and health-care benefits.

Gump stressed to the salaried retirees that there is reason to pressure legislators, such as Congressman Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, to take steps to reverse the PBGC takeover.

“They’re trying to take everything away from us. Why would we support them?” he said. “It’s time for our legislators to step in and say why they’ve treated us so badly.”

Gump said Ryan made “a lot of effort” to help the retirees, but, “We want results.”

Gump recommended sending a fax to local members of Congress, paying a personal visit to the office, getting the name of someone in that office connected with the Delphi issue and sending e-mails and letters to that individual.

Chuck Cunningham of Howland, a leader of the retirees group, spoke privately to the group about the lawsuit filed in Michigan federal court by a national Delphi retirees group representing 20,000 former workers to stop the PBGC from taking over the pensions.

“We still have multiple legal avenues that have not been blocked,” Cunningham said. “It’s for a long shot not over.”

About 30 of the retirees followed the advice of one of its speakers and proceeded a couple blocks west of the restaurant to meet with representatives of Ryan’s Warren office, including Ryan’s press secretary Pat Lowry and district director Rick Leonard.

“We met with them for about an hour,” Lowry said, calling the meeting a “pretty frank discussion” in which the retirees had a “lot of questions and concerns.”

runyan@vindy.com