To rescue Delphi Corp. from imminent bankruptcy, the auto parts giant's 24,000 United Auto Workers members are supposed to take massive wage cuts, benefit givebacks and myriad concessions that self-respecting union leaders would never accept, much less ask their members to ratify.

That's why Delphi, the former parts unit of General Motors Corp., could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as early as today, according to union summaries of the ongoing talks and industry sources familiar with the situation. GM isn't keen to bail out its offspring, nor can the union take the proffered "deal" and still claim to be a union.

Never before have UAW workers been asked to absorb such Draconian cuts -- not in the dark days of the Chrysler bailout, the oil shocks of the 1970s or the periodic crunches since. The sickening part for those at Delphi trying to put in a day's work is that rejecting the demands won't make them go away, because they're considered "market rate" outside the UAW-Big Three bubble and are likely to return during a bloody bankruptcy.

Whether yours is a union house or a management house, whether your grandpa was at Ford's Battle of the Overpass in '37 or managed a plant for GM in '87, the significance of an impending Delphi bankruptcy and GM's parallel talks with the UAW for health care concessions cannot be overstated.

A cornerstone of 20th-century industrial America, whose labor helped vanquish the Axis powers in World War II and laid the foundation for unparalleled prosperity, is perilously close to crumbling under the pressure of late-20th-century mismanagement and 21st-century competition.

That's not the only culprit here.

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger blames government trade policies, crafted by Republicans and Democrats alike, as he did again this week in an interview on WJR-AM (760), as well as currency manipulation by China and Japan. That's all debatable.

He likely wouldn't acknowledge, however, that his union demanded "more, more, more" -- and often got it -- when its biggest employers increasingly could not afford it; that labor contracts that pay laid-off people to sit at home or bar plant closings are increasingly indefensible; that being the undisputed "gold standard" for industrial workers has long since priced UAW members out of a competitive market, enabling others to undercut the union almost at will.

Nor would a long procession of auto execs, many of them now reclining in the retired comfort of million-dollar homes far from gritty Detroit, admit that they succumbed to short-term expedience too often. Wooed by the "cooperative" union-management spirit of the '80s and '90s, they mistook labor peace for smart business decision-making and ceded control of vast portions of their companies to union leaders whose goals were antithetical to theirs.

Paying a painful price

The deals those execs cut with the UAW enriched themselves in good times by keeping the plants running, ensured more good times for hourly workers glad to reap the Big Three beneficence, and assumed that Detroit's comparative hegemony of its own market would more or less continue as it had been.

Both sides couldn't have been more wrong.

So now, 24,000 UAW members are on the verge of being asked to pay a heavy price because their leaders and the leaders of their company couldn't agree on the scope of the problem facing them, let alone the solution.

"If Delphi filed bankruptcy, (its) proposal ... to the UAW will look better than the restructuring proposal it submits to the courts," says a union briefing memo circulated Thursday, the content of which was corroborated by Delphi officials. "With that package, the UAW member would not be able to afford a vehicle that our products are assembled into."

There's no telling where this looming string of train wrecks will end.

Is a Delphi bankruptcy, any day now?

In a GM decision to make unilateral changes to its health care benefits for UAW members and retirees -- and spark an ugly, market-share killing fight -- if the automaker can't deliver the $1 billion concession package with the union it wants?

In a last-minute GM bailout of Delphi, despite back-channel GM insistence that none will be forthcoming? Yes, such a deal would ease the union's pain, but it likely would invite a punishing response from equity and debt markets and incur the almost-certain wrath of billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, whose 10 percent stake in the General makes him a formidable obstacle -- or after-the-fact critic -- to any multibillion-dollar bailout of Delphi.

Misjudging reality

The early '80s were painful here. The mid- to late '90s were hailed as the new Golden Age, which it wasn't. September 11 showed that Detroit could "Keep America Rolling," as GM boasted.

But behind the façade of cheap gas, SUV mania and incentive-fueled sales, the widening cracks in Detroit's automotive foundation were evident to anyone who had the stomach to look and the honesty to understand what they saw.

Profit-rich competitors like Toyota and Honda were claiming more and more market share, much of it supplied by plants and workers right here in the good ol' USA. Struggling rivals like Nissan fixed their business, if with the tacit support of their government.

Meanwhile, the financial health of Detroit's two biggest players -- GM and Ford -- and their former parts units, Delphi and Visteon, weakened.

Neither GM nor Ford, considered financially stronger than its crosstown rival, are in danger of going bust anytime soon. But their debt is rated "junk," their North American business strategies are in doubt by outsiders, and their ability to hold their own in the U.S. market amid high gas prices is uncertain.

Caught in the maw of all these powerful forces are thousands of average workers who didn't negotiate with management, didn't design the cars they assemble, didn't devise lame marketing strategies, or didn't instruct their union leaders to bleed the company dry.

If Delphi goes bankrupt, the lawyers will get rich cleaning up the mess. The execs will still be paid handsomely, even if they lose their bonuses. Salaried employees, weary from witnessing union members often evade givebacks, will see health care premiums rise, 401(k) accounts go unmatched and pensions potentially eviscerated.

But it's the looming comeuppance of union members, more than anything else, that would put a human face on the reckoning that feels nigh. It wasn't supposed to work out like this.