I did. And I had two young kids at the time too.
For those Delphi workers who cannot absorb a 60% pay cut, why don't they take their skills to another company? Surely, if their labor is worth as much as they think it is, they would have no problem gaining employment elsewhere.
But maybe, just maybe, they were overpaid and that is why they can't find anybody else willing to employ them at those wages.
Oh, I have no doubt that they were overpaid. But with that kind of a paycut, they're looking to lose 80% or more of their workforce.
Maybe that's what they wanted. There are drastic cuts that wouldn't have been so impossible to live with, though. Going down to $16 per hour would have been a 40% cut that would have allowed some degree of possibility of staying on board.
As you sad, you stayed on. I don't know how many others would.
Many years ago I had to do a study, as a part of a course, on wage rates in the auto industry. I could never figure out why, the wage rate was so high for essentially unskilled labor. Still puzzled.