Severance Suit Settled
UAW wins a $17.6 million award to help laid-off workers
“Finally, somebody made them pay,” Ron Gelabert said. “It's a bittersweet victory.”
It took five years and the tenacity of the UAW, but in the end Honeywell Inc., the corporate successor to Allied Signal Corp.'s tank and aircraft plant in Stratford, Conn., could not weasel out of its obligations to 502 laid-off workers.
The workers from UAW Locals 376 and 1010 will receive $17.6 million in back severance and other benefits under an important settlement reached last month in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) case. Those funds are in addition to the $7.7 million in severance benefits paid to workers laid off prior to the expiration of labor agreements between Allied Signal and the UAW locals.
For Gelabert, a maintenance and electronics technician from Local 1010 who had 21 years of seniority when he was laid off, the award means he can pay down some credit-card debt he accumulated after losing his job.
Gelabert said his family went without health care coverage for a long time, and he was unable to help his sons with college costs.
“To me, it's like a long nightmare that is finally over,” said Gelabert, who found a job as an electronics technician at a Pratt and Whitney plant, an hour's drive away.
What workers get
Allied Signal in 1997 decided to relocate work to low-wage areas, despite always turning a profit at the plant. The company then bought Honeywell and took on that name. It then laid off these workers and refused to pay severance.
Under the settlement, said UAW Region 9A Director Phil Wheeler, members will receive a $4,000 severance bonus, plus 45 hours of pay per year of service to the company, and a $3.50 per month per year of service increase in their pension. The severance pay ranges from about $2,000 to $60,000, but most workers will see about $25,000, not including the $4,000 bonus. The settlement also protects retiree health care for those currently receiving it.
“This is going to help an awful lot of people,” said Russ See, president of Local 376. “Some of the workers I know have been working two jobs just to carry health insurance.”
The award was the largest in New England and one of the largest in the United States. And it came about because the UAW held its ground, Wheeler said. After the UAW won its case before the NLRB, the company offered the workers $7 million, hoping they would tire of the fight and settle on the cheap.
“We hung in there and we got a lot more,” Wheeler said.
Friend and foe
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who tried to save the workers' jobs in 1998, helped gain the settlement. “They could have dragged this out for another two or three years,” Wheeler said. “She was helpful in continuing the pressure. She spoke out frequently against the company and for the union.”
Republican Gov. John Rowland, who is being challenged by Democrat Bill Curry, did not help the workers when those good-paying jobs left Connecticut.
“Where was he during this?” Wheeler asked. “He was out trying to lure the New England Patriots to Hartford and spending millions and millions of dollars trying to do that.”
Wheeler added that Rowland spent more millions trying
to lure lower-paying Allied Signal jobs from Massachusetts
to Connecticut instead of trying to save the higher-paying
ones already in the state.
