Workers wait for proceeds after sale of Metro Machine

NORFOLK

Some workers at the former Metro Machine Corp. say they've been getting the runaround about their shares in a stock plan worth an estimated $148 million when General Dynamics Corp. bought the shipyard last fall.

General Dynamics closed on its purchase of the shipyard on the Berkley riverfront across from downtown on Oct. 31. Two months later, employees say they can't get clear answers on how much money they have coming to them or when they can expect to have access to it.

"Everybody's talking about it," said Thomas Miles, 43, a shipfitter who worked for Metro Machine for roughly 16 years and guesses he's got roughly $200,000 coming his way through the stock plan. "They don't want to give you a straight-up answer."

Richard A. Goldbach, Metro Machine's former CEO and trustee of the company's employee stock retirement plan, said Friday that he has had no conversations with General Dynamics officials since the sale of the company and has not received any proceeds from the stock plan.

"I'm in the same boat that everyone else is in," he said of the yard's roughly 400 employees. "I think it's fair to say that I'm just as anxious to receive my money as they are to receive theirs."

General Dynamics did not disclose the value of the deal for Metro Machine, all of whose stock was owned by the employee-stock plan. A letter from Goldbach to Metro Machine employees when the deal was announced on Sept. 21 said the plan would receive about $148 million after repayment of Metro's debt and other obligations.

An additional $16 million would be placed in escrow to serve as a fund to satisfy certain claims General Dynamics might have. Any remaining balance after 18 months would flow to the employee stock owners.

"We appreciate employees' concerns about this process," said Rob Doolittle, a General Dynamics spokesman. "It's a complicated process and we are doing what we can to provide a variety of opportunities to them to answer their questions."

The company is sponsoring a series of six seminars starting today and continuing for the next two Saturdays, at which stock-plan participants and their spouses can meet with company representatives about the plan as well as with investment counselors, Doolittle said.

The seminars were announced on Dec. 21, he said.

General Dynamics expects to give statements to employees specifying their balances "within the next several weeks" and to begin making initial payments in early March, he said.

The last payments, including those from any leftover escrow money, are projected to be made by the middle of 2013, he said.

Samuel Hill, who worked at Metro Machine for 22 years and has served as its union president, is now a self-employed photographer with a new job waiting for him in Texas.

When he asked a General Dynamics human resources official how long it would take for him to get his stock-plan money, he said he was told 18 months.

"There's a lot of people who are upset about it," he said.

Hill said he has been aware of the upcoming seminars but he's not interested in advice on where he can put his money.

All he wants to know is how much of it he has coming to him and exactly when and how he can get access to it.

Robert McCabe, (757) 446-2327, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com