TOLEDO, Ohio — On Monday, UAW Local 14 said dozens of members of the autoworkers union had been accused of unemployment fraud by the state, even though those members really were unemployed.
Four days later, on Friday, representatives from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services met with those members to try to get to the bottom of the issue, sitting down and walking through documents and timelines with each worker one at a time.
UAW Local 14 president Tony Totty said of the about 60 workers who stepped into the union hall on Friday, all were able to either solve their issues or move the process ahead.
ODJFS communications director Bill Teets said each case they encountered had its own set of problems, but that many stemmed from workers' accounts having been hacked, and then the workers not filing the proper fraud paperwork.
"In this case, the fraud that occurred, if someone notifies us and says 'hey, I think someone took over my account, the money's not there,' we'll start an investigation and we will ask them questions about which weeks are you missing, what is the scope and extent of this type of fraud," Teets said.
Teets claimed ODJFS initially had no choice but to claim fraudulence.
"Without any information on what is suspected, we have no recourse other than to say, okay, we're gonna declare this claim fraudulent," Teets said.
That meant employees' entire unemployment record, including actual unemployment time, was flagged by the state.
This led to members receiving letters that said they owed thousands of dollars to both the state and General Motors.
The incident affected GM employees like line worker Mike Byers, who before Friday, was worried he was about to go bankrupt.
"They eventually said I owed them $9,600 dollars," Byers said. "That's all been adjusted down today, but for three months I thought I owed them a lot of money. I just walked in, sat down with the lady, she went through everything with me, explained to me where it went wrong, what they had on their records, and corrected all of the mistakes that had been made."
Byers thanked Totty for arranging for ODJFS to come to the UAW Local 14 union hall and help resolve the issue in person.
Totty while he's pleased that the issues are now resolved, the unemployment claims system might need some clarity with this many workers running into documentation issues.