GM Delphi Workers' Comp Alerts

General Motors' Disability Retirees & Workers' Comp

General Motors is planning on reducing many GM retirees' workers' comp benefits in January 2010. If this happens to you, please contact us immediately. We intend to challenge many of these reductions in court.

States, including Michigan, set up workers' compensation systems, nearly a hundred years ago to provide weekly benefits to workers who suffer lost wages as a result of their work injuries. In exchange, workers gave up their right to sue their employers when their injuries occurred because of the employer's negligence. In 1982, the Michigan Legislature changed the law to allow employers to reduce workers' comp checks by the amount of an injured worker's hard earned pension (if hurt after March 31, 1982), unless a union could negotiate protections to avoid the reduction. The UAW immediately negotiated a deal to protect their injured worker's workers' compensation benefits from being reduced by their disability pensions. In 1996, a deal was reached where new disability retirees would see their workers' comp benefits reduced when they turned 65 by the amount of their pensions. In May 2009, General Motors demanded that the UAW rewrite and undo all of the collective bargaining agreements since 1982 so that existing GM-UAW retirees injured after 1982 will see their workers' compensation benefits reduced by disability pension monies to the extent to which the combined total of the worker's pension, Social Security Disability and workers' compensation check exceeds their wage at the time they were injured. (Future retirees, retiring after January 1, 2010 will also automatically see their workers' compensation reduced by the after-tax value of their pensions.) In one scenario, a worker, for example, who made $20,000/yr when he was injured in 1986, who is now trying to make it on a $1200/month net pension, $800/month in Social Security Disability, and $225/week in workers' compensation will see his workers' compensation check disappear completely. Under Michigan law, Social Security Disability benefits are not supposed to reduce workers' compensation benefits. Furthermore, these workers retired pursuant to the terms of their collective bargaining agreement with certain contractual expectations. Now GM wants to rewrite these prior contracts and the retirees, under federal labor law, don't even get a vote. Even though the United States Supreme Court has specifically held in the past that unions do not have authority to negotiate for current retirees, we fear that the courts might ignore this and allow GM to renege on their prior collective bargaining agreements and eliminate many of their injured workers' workers' compensation benefits. If your benefits are reduced in January 2010, please contact us to see how we can assist you.

Delphi Injured Workers & Workers' Comp

Many Delphi employees have seen their workers' compensation checks terminated recently as a result of Delphi's bankruptcy. The State of Michigan permits certain companies (like GM, Delphi, Chrysler and K-Mart) to go without insurance if they persuade the State they are financially solvent enough to pay their claims directly and go without workers' comp insurance. When Delphi initially filed for bankruptcy, it asked the bankruptcy judge to keep paying its workers' compensation claims. Delphi ultimately asked to sell its assets to a new company in a sale in which the new company did not agree to pay all of the old Delphi's workers' compensation obligations. Federal Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain approved the sale. When it became apparent that the bankruptcy judge would not require the new Delphi to assume all of the old Delphi's workers' compensation obligations, Michigan Governor Granholm issued a memorandum instructing all Delphi workers to try to protect their interests by filing a proof of claim with the bankruptcy court by July 15, 2009 and by giving notice to the Self-Insured Security Fund as soon as possible. Michigan has a Self-Insured Security Fund which is supposed to step in and pay claims if a self-insured employer goes bankrupt up and fails to pay claims. Unfortunately, the Self-Insured Security Fund has yet to make payments to workers and appears to be arguing that Delphi has some obscure workers' compensation insurance that should be paying instead. (The Self-Insured Security Fund has also indicated that it, at best, can raise $9 million a year to cover $24 million of Delphi's annual liabilities.) If you are a Delphi injured worker and your benefits have been stopped, you need to give proper notice to the Self-Insured Fund immediately. We strongly recommend that you contact us for an appointment so we can try to assist you.