Aug. 27--Rita Ertman, a salaried retiree from American Axle & Manufacturing, didn't expect Delphi Corp.'s bankruptcy case to touch her life.

Ertman, 61, of Birch Run, was a foreman at General Motors Corp. until 1994 when her plant in Three Rivers was sold to American Axle. At that time, Ertman recalls, both companies said they would share the cost of her pension. But when Ertman retired in 2003, she noticed something unusual.

The monthly checks she had expected to come from GM instead came from Delphi.

"I never worked for Delphi," Ertman said.

When GM spun off Delphi in 1999, it moved the pensions of Ertman and scores of other American Axle salaried workers to Delphi. Now, Delphi has been in bankruptcy for nearly three years and is struggling to emerge.

Throughout the case, Delphi Executive Chairman Steve Miller has vowed to protect the company's pensions. But the government recently has raised questions about whether Delphi will be able to move forward on its strategy to keep its pension plans.

Delphi expects to move some of its hourly pension obligations -- not salaried retirees' pensions -- to the over-funded pension plan at GM, which is fighting for its own financial health in North America, having lost almost $70 billion in the last 3 1/2 years.

Pension experts say GM's decision years ago to move part of its pension plans to its Delphi spinoff is legal.

In Delphi's case, if the company terminates its plan and hands its obligations to the government, some retirees would see no change, though others could miss out on part or all of their step-ups in payments and early-retirement supplements.

Ertman and others in her situation say it's unfair that their pensions are wrapped up in the bankruptcy case of a company for which they never worked.

"A lot of good people who have retired have a lot of stress over this," she said.

Delphi takes over

At first, many retirees wondered why their checks were coming from Delphi, but didn't worry too much about it. Then in October 2005, they received letters about Delphi's bankruptcy filing.

The letter said there was a risk that Delphi could fail to make its pension payments and would have to hand those obligations to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a quasi-governmental agency that monitors pension plans and steps in when companies can't pay,

Alarmed by this risk, Ertman and other retirees talked to lawyers and made several trips to Washington, D.C., to talk to federal officials and politicians only to learn that there was nothing they could do to move their pensions back onto GM's books.