UAW wins big settlement with Delco

About 350 members of UAW Local 662 in Anderson, Ind., recently won a $5.25 million settlement against a company that closed its plant and refused to honor an agreement on Supple-mental Unemployment Benefits (SUB) pay.

The settlement, which gives each worker about $15,000, comes more than two years after Delco Remy America stopped producing alternators and starters there and shipped the work overseas.

“From the legal sense, we’re glad it’s over,” said Local 662 President Rick Zachary. “This has been a long fight for our members.”

The contract between the UAW and Delco Remy expired March 31, 2003, one day before the plant shut down.

The company paid SUB benefits and insurance for three months and then stopped. When the UAW argued that the workers were due more, the company said it no longer had a contract and wouldn’t pay.

The case went to court, and in January Delco Remy agreed to settle, paying each worker what amounts to another nine months of SUB pay.

“Not only was it a tough battle, but one that might have left the workers with nothing without a force like the UAW fighting for that additional SUB pay,” said lawyer Barry Macey, with the Indianapolis firm representing the workers.

“A lot of credit goes to Terry Thurman,” said Macey, adding that the UAW Region 3 director, “would not let it go” and “stood up for these workers and used the UAW’s resources to fight for them.”

“We had a contract with this company, and they had obligations to our workers. We were not going to stand by and let a company just close the plant and go away without doing what is right,” Thurman said.

“There is no way that this union is going to sit by and not fight for what’s right for our workers.”

Sandra Davis