Legions of ex-Nortel workers wait years for bankruptcy payouts

In the early days, Raymond Ackley, like so many others, believed he could count on receiving his severance payment. That was back in 2010 when he got swept up in one of the many rounds of layoffs instituted by Nortel Networks, his employer for 27 years.

Today the 62-year-old Cary resident is among legions of ex-Nortel workers – along with contractors, consultants and vendors – in North Carolina and around the globe who are still waiting. They are owed severance, health benefits, retirement money and business payments that were frozen in 2009 when the global telecom equipment maker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

As the years have passed, some former Nortel workers and clients have run out of patience and sold their financial interest to Wall Street speculators for a fraction of what they were owed. But Ackley, a former Nortel technician, said he refuses to sell out to “bloodsuckers” and is holding tight to his severance claim of $32,386.90, or what’s left of it.

Nortel’s transnational bankruptcy proceeding – spanning the United States, Canada and Europe – has turned into one of the longest-running corporate bankruptcies in history, a war of attrition with no end in sight.

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Bankruptcy lawyers, many billing over $1,000 an hour, have already been awarded $1.7 billion out of the original $9 billion in Nortel assets, leaving $7.3 billion in a shrinking “lockbox” set aside for former employees, businesses, bondholders, hedge funds and others awaiting their share. In North Carolina the waiting list includes Cary software company SAS, the N.C. Department of Revenue and Jesse Joel Hackney, once the highest-ranking Nortel executive at the company’s Research Triangle Park site.

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