My husband and I work as a helicopter crew. He is the pilot and I am the mechanic. We quit our jobs because the director of maintenance was saying that my husband could overtorque or overtemp the helicopter and I would cover it up. He said this to our fuel truck driver and to one of our crew members from the US forest service, we were on a forest fire contract. He specifically used these words. They are buzz words in our industry. After these comments I was being questioned in detail about the aircraft and the fuel truck even saying he didn't believe me. This statement got around. 50+ miles away in a different town different company heard about it. We went through my husbands' chain of command. The chief pilot was pissed. The owner/general manager/director of operations only made excuses for the director of maintenance. We confronted the director of maintenance with the forest service crew in attendance. At first he denied it than he said it was taken out of context. This went on for about 6 weeks. We gave the director of operations 2 weeks to correct this situation. Nothing was done so we quit. We were denied unemployment benefits. When we had our appeal hearing we found out from the chief pilots testimony that the director of maintenance was not happy to have us hired in the first place. At no time did he indicate this to us. All we want is our unemployment benefits reinstated. A letter of apology would be nice but that would be a long shot. Is there anything we can do? We live off of the unemployment benefits throught the winter because we work contracts in the spring/summer/fall. Our jobs are somewhat seasonal and part time. This is a small industry. Being a female in it makes it even smaller. This director of maintenance was my direct boss. I have a good hunch he is saying negative comments about myself and my husband. Thanks for any help that can be offered. The company is in Louisiana and we live in Seattle, WA.

Kim