Collins & Aikman Corp., a Troy-based auto-parts supplier in bankruptcy, is in a desperate fight to keep key managers from leaving during its crucial restructuring.

So on Tuesday it asked U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit for permission to pay 220 selected managers up to $44.5 million to stay. The court is to consider the request later this month.

David Youngman, spokesman for Collins & Aikman, said the retention payments should not be seen as golden parachutes for managers of a company that is looking to cut its blue-collar staff and close factories.

"It's for the upper, upper management, and it's tied into how they create value for the creditors," Youngman said. "Key employees have been identified, and we need to retain them for the remainder of the bankruptcy process."

The supplier of interior fixtures such as instrument panels and seat fabrics is in the exact predicament that neighboring auto-parts supplier Delphi Corp., also in bankruptcy, avoided last week.

Collins & Aikman, which has 11,500 U.S. employees including 3,500 in Michigan, has lost nearly 300 salaried employees such as plant managers and senior executives since filing for bankruptcy May 17.

In comparison, before filing for bankruptcy, Delphi, the nation's largest auto-parts supplier, announced sweetened severance packages for its top 21 executives -- the top five of which earn between $800,000 and $1 million -- in exchange for signing noncompete agreements. If the executives don't leave, the plan would cost Delphi nothing.

In September, Collins & Aikman won bankruptcy court approval for a Success Sharing Plan for CEO Frank E. Macher and other inner-circle executives, but court documents Tuesday said the company "realizes that this is not enough, on its own, to meet the debtor's human capital needs."

The 25-page motion filed Tuesday for the key employee retention program blames the exodus of managers on the "well-publicized economic problems and subsequent Chapter 11 filing that have created a climate of instability for employees."

The company says up to $44.5 million in bonuses and incentives to 220 employees would cure that instability. Collins & Aikman based its offering on comparable retention programs found in other large Chapter 11 cases.

Not everyone thinks the retention plan is fair. Chris Wellons, a 59-year-old hourly Collins & Aikman employee from Americus, Ga., sits at home during work shifts on sick leave because of anxiety and back pain.

So far this year, Collins & Aikman has lost 62 salaried employees from its soft trim business, 81 from the plastics business, 100 from the engineering and design team and an additional 55 corporate staff employees. Some were plant managers in Americus, Ga.; Athens and Springfield, Tenn.; Old Fort, N.C.; and Westland and Sterling Heights.

The Success Sharing Plan has three components: an annual bonus program, payment of up to 12 months of base severance pay and a Success Sharing pool bonus payable upon confirmation of a plan or sale of the company's assets.

Like Delphi, Collins & Aikman has said it needs to eliminate hourly workers and close plants to emerge from bankruptcy and return to profitability. It announced plans to close its Westland operation, which has 250 workers, and has plans to close other plants.

Delphi hourly employees and politicians have voiced anger over the company's executive severance packages, which provide compensation in the event Delphi terminates an executive's employment without cause or if the executive quits for good reason and include 18 months of salary and 18 months of bonuses, up from 12 months.

But Delphi executives can't qualify for that benefit without signing an agreement that forbids them from immediately jumping to a competitor, a requirement designed to keep them from leaving.

Approval came a week after Delphi asked its unionized workforce to accept wage reductions from $25-to-$27 an hour to $9.50-to-$10.50 an hour, along with higher out-of-pocket health care costs with no vision or dental insurance, frozen pensions, less vacation and restricted overtime.

While the company's blue-collar employees have expressed outrage over boosting severance pay for executives with salaries up to $1 million, Delphi CEO Steve Miller says he has been unfairly criticized.

"People fail to realize that I effectively found a way to keep my management team intact without spending a nickel," Miller said in a recent interview.

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