PORTLAND, Maine — The machinists union representing workers at Verso Paper’s former paper mill in Bucksport has filed a complaint with state officials arguing the company still owes most of its members about $357,000 in severance payments and that it could owe as much as $3 million across the entire workforce of more than 500.
Bill Cohen, spokesman for Verso in Maine, said Tuesday the company believes the payments it had approved by the Maine Department of Labor were correct.
Before the union complaint with the Maine Bureau of Labor Standards, the Maine attorney general’s office found no problem with those payments, asking on Feb. 13 for a Kennebec County Superior Court justice to confirm Verso met its severance obligations and shield the company from further legal action over that pay.
The union has objected to that motion as well, citing its labor department complaint in arguing the matter of severance pay remains unresolved.
“There’s two calculations that we’re saying they have artificially decreased,” said Kimberly Ervin Tucker, attorney for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 1821.
Julie Rabinowitz, spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Labor, said the complaint from the union is still under review by the director of the Maine Bureau of Labor Standards.
“The department is currently reviewing documentation submitted by concerned workers to ensure the validity of Verso severance pay,” Rabinowitz said. “Upon completion of our review, we will be in contact with all parties involved to discuss our review.”
In its complaint, the union argued that Verso deducted short-term disability payments from some employees’ annual income and inflated the number of weeks that employees worked.
Severance is determined using three figures: gross wages, weeks worked in the last year and total number of years worked.
With that, Tucker said the company did not provide union or state officials sufficient data to double-check the company’s severance payment calculations. She said Tuesday that she was still awaiting that information from the company.
Union officials estimate the shortfall totals about $357,158 for 52 of the 57 employees the union represents. The union estimates that at least one employee is owed as much as $29,000, with an average of $6,233 owed to each employee, according to accounting Tucker included with her complaint to the Maine Bureau of Labor Standards.
Tucker said the United Steelworkers Union, which represents most of the former Bucksport millworkers through two local chapters, was reviewing severance payments made to its members as well. An attorney for that union was not available for comment Tuesday afternoon.
In federal court, the machinists union has fought to stop the sale of the shuttered mill to Canadian scrap metal dealer AIM Development, arguing the mill’s demolition would reduce competition in Verso’s market and, as a result, violate federal antitrust law.
The Department of Justice did not factor the Bucksport mill into an antitrust review before clearing Verso’s purchase of its larger competitor, NewPage, and U.S. District Judge John Woodcock dismissed the union’s claims in a Jan. 20 order that also dismissed some of the union’s severance pay claims.
The union shortly after filed a motion to reconsider that decision. That reconsideration is still pending, and further arguments from both sides are expected.
In general, the union has argued that the state overstepped its bounds by negotiating a deal with Verso that allowed the company to pay severance in two separate payments when, the union argues, state law requires payment in a shorter timeframe.
Parties in the state case are set to file additional arguments in April and the union will file one more reply to Verso in the federal case before the judge issues a decision on whether to reconsider the union’s severance and antitrust claims.
The company in early February said it completed the last of two severance payments to former workers at the mill.