GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Crammed inside a smoke-filled bar, Gregg Shotwell stared grimly at a group of fellow auto workers, trying to rally them to fight for the American dream.
After sticking with the automotive industry through its most dire times, and faced with deep salary cuts and diminished healthcare benefits, their employers at General Motors Corp. and Delphi Corp. are offering to pay them to quit: as much as $140,000 to leave or retire early -- and, in some cases, without healthcare.
It's an offer that has many workers feeling anxious, as well as angry with their bosses and union leadership. Even the billboard across the street from the bar where Shotwell was sitting -- an advertisement for a Honda SUV -- felt like a slap in the face.
"We were promised a future with these companies. We've spent our lives at these factories. So have our parents, and so are our children," said Shotwell, 55, a machine operator at Delphi's fuel-injector plant in Coopersville, Mich. "We have to fight, any way we can."
On Wednesday, GM and Delphi -- the troubled auto-parts maker that filed for bankruptcy protection in October -- announced that they had offered buyout packages to more than 125,000 hourly employees of the two companies.
At Delphi, which has 34,000 hourly workers in the U.S., up to 13,000 employees would be offered one-time payments of $35,000 to leave. Up to 5,000 of the remaining Delphi workers would be offered jobs at GM.
GM, which has 113,000 hourly employees in the U.S., has said in the past that it hopes to shrink its job force by 30,000 over the next few years.
Officials with several local United Auto Workers offices in Michigan -- including those that represent workers in the Lansing and Flint areas -- said their phones had been ringing all day with calls from employees eager to take the buyout.
Ted Hoven, a 35-year-old who runs a screw machine at the Delphi plant in Coopersville, is not one of them.
He once helped make automotive fuel injectors for Bosch USA. When the company went through massive layoffs three years ago, Hoven fled to Delphi in hopes of finding more stability.
Now he prays he'll be among the 5,000 people GM plans to absorb.
"I've got four kids, and I don't qualify for any of the buyouts," Hoven said. "We don't go out to eat anymore. We don't buy anything frivolous. But how can I trust that any company I go work for will even stay in business?"
