Lawsuit claims United Technologies cheated laid-off employees out of stock

[xchrom]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/23/lawsuit-claims-united-technologies-cheated-laid-off-employees-out-of-stock/



NEWARK — Last September, not long after being laid off from his job with United Technologies, Richard Grisafi logged onto an account to check on his company stock. To his shock, the account was empty, he said.

"I couldn’t believe they took 141 shares from me, after I had worked for it," Grisafi, 31, said yesterday, just hours after a class-action lawsuit, in which he’s named as the lead plaintiff, was filed in Newark against the United Technologies, a multinational company based in Connecticut.

Grisafi’s civil lawsuit — he claims he’s lost about $13,000 worth of stock — is brought on behalf of himself and more than 5,000 other former United Technologies employees who he claims completed post-secondary degrees under the company’s "Employee Scholars" program, often putting in years of work at nights and on weekends and holidays.

In the suit, he claims members of his class were guaranteed vested common stock in United if they earned their degrees, then stayed on with the company for a specified period of time.