Ford Workers Sue Concern, UAW Over Benefits for Unemployment
Thousands of current and former Ford Motor Co. workers in Kentucky have taken the company and the United Auto Workers to court to recoup millions of dollars in allegedly unpaid unemployment benefits.</br></br>The trial, which began last week in Louisville federal court, comes nearly 10 years after workers sued Ford claiming it neglected to pay them supplemental unemployment funds during layoffs in the early 1980s. Plaintiffs' attorneys say Ford owes the workers $14 million in benefits plus interest -- a total of more than $35 million.</br></br>According to their 1982 complaint, the approximately 2,000 workers were entitled, under a union contract, to 95% of their after-tax weekly pay for a specified period of time during layoffs. The company was obligated to supplement state and federal unemployment benefits so that workers would receive that amount. But in the early 1980s, when workers from a Ford plant in Jefferson County, Ky., tried to collect their supplemental benefits called "SUB" funds, Ford didn't have sufficient funds, the workers allege.</br></br>The workers claimed in their suit, which has been certified as a class action, that the company had mistakenly paid more than $250 million in supplemental unemployment funds to another group of Kentucky workers who were entitled to supplemental funding from a federal benefit called the Trade Readjustment Allowance or TRA. Some of those workers were getting up to 150% of their take-home pay during layoffs.</br></br>Ford's SUB fund was able to recoup about $138 million of the $250 million through paycheck deductions from workers who later returned to their jobs, according to Charles Zimmerman, one of the attorneys for the allegedly underpaid workers.