The former parts unit of General Motors and largest auto component
supplier in North America, Delphi, has declared bankruptcy. The company
now needs huge concessions from its current employees while it unloads
its pension obligations on the government. Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post finds it a tragedy that the private sector is moving to defined contribution pensions.
Those middle-income jobs that still come with benefits attached are
increasingly clustered in the public sector, where they are becoming
more vulnerable politically. In the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, teachers,
nurses and cops struggled to win contracts comparable to the auto and
steelworkers’ deals. Today, they are among the last workers in America
— along with chief executive officers, we should note — to still have
defined-benefit pensions.
Meyerson supports efforts to unionize workers in non-tradeable
sectors — I guess with the hope of making them less competitive and
dragging down the rest of the economy as the unproductive and protected
sectors of Japan’s economy did there. Just as with Social Security,
when forced to face reality about paternalistic organizations, some
would rather rage against the dying of the light than end their
dependency.
