Lawsuit: FCA, Labor Unions Tricked Chrysler Employees Out of Jobs

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A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed by 55 former employees of FCA US LLC against the company and the plaintiffs’ international and local labor unions claiming the defendants unlawfully bargained for the plaintiffs’ termination from their positions at Chrysler’s Toledo assembly plant.

The case describes a new assembly plant Chrysler constructed to manufacture its 2007 Jeep Wrangler vehicles. The defendants allegedly recruited senior members already employed by Chrysler to “retire” from their positions and work for third parties at the Toledo assembly plant, allowing them to collect their pensions and continue working in their areas of expertise. The defendants, according to the complaint, were testing a new “collaborative” structure in which contractors would perform parts of the manufacturing process on-location – a practice the case says was “specifically prohibited and/or severely curtailed” by agreements between Chrysler and the labor union defendants of which the plaintiffs were members.

The suit argues that years later, Chrysler decided to change the structure of the Toledo plant and employ only “traditional” Chrysler workers, resulting in the plaintiffs’ termination. According to the complaint, the defendants had represented to the plaintiffs that their jobs would be protected when they were coerced into retiring early and working for a third-party. The suit accuses the defendants of breaching the terms of their agreements with the plaintiffs and claims that executive members of the union defendants accepted bribes from Chrysler to “take company-friendly positions at the expense of the [union] members that they represented.”

On top of that, the plaintiffs argue that union executives are under investigation for “selling jobs,” or accepting cash payments from prospective employees in exchange for finding them jobs at Chrysler plants.