Workers Stand Against G.M.-Delphi Buyout Plan A Los Angeles Times report. After sticking with the automotive industry through its most dire times, and faced with deep salary cuts and diminished health care benefits, General Motors and Delphi are offering to pay their workers to quit: as much as $140,000 to leave or retire early -- and, in some cases, without health care or vested pensions. It's an offer that has many workers feeling anxious, as well as angry with their bosses and their union leadership. "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, a 55 year old 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 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, Mich., is not one of them. "I've got four kids, and I don't qualify for any of the buyouts," Hoven asked. "We don't go out to eat any more. We don't buy anything frivolous. But how can I trust that any company I go work for will even stay in business?" "Any way you look at this, these people's lifestyles are changing drastically and not for the better," said Gary N. Chaison, professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "It's the end of the grand social contract that Henry Ford began. It's going to be a very sad ending for tens of thousands of American people." By P.J. Huffstutter, Times Staff Writer 6:01 PM PST, March 22, 2006