Laid-off and dying
Steel workers need a new strategy
By Martha Grevatt
Cleveland
Every day, in addition to formal obituaries, the Cleveland
daily newspaper lists everyone who recently died. A few words
identify the deceased, perhaps as a member of a church or a
worker at a certain company.
This year has seen a marked increase in deaths of workers or
retirees from LTV Steel.
Because of bankruptcy proceedings, on Feb. 28 LTV retirees
lost their health insurance. Laid-off workers lost
supplementary unemployment benefits and health insurance.
Salaried employees were left out in the cold completely,
without a penny in the severance pay promised them.
However, the bankruptcy court approved millions of dollars
in "retention bonuses" to the top executives who shut the mills
down. The workers' families drew little comfort from the
announcement, also made Feb. 28, that a buyer had been found
for the mills, which were idled last year.
Officials of the Steelworkers union are pleased that the new
owners, the New York investment firm of W. L. Ross, will reopen
the mills and recognize the union. It is surely good news that
steel making will continue in Cleveland.
However, the new bosses will not be bound by the previous
contract, and will surely demand even more concessions on top
of those the union has already made to LTV. Even more
significant, they will recall at most 3,000 of the 7,500
workers who lost their jobs. Whether these recalls will respect
seniority rights remains to be seen.
The Steelworkers leadership focused on sweetening the pie
for a potential buyer by dropping a successor clause that would
have required the new owners to recognize the union and abide
by the existing contract. The union leaders credit their threat
to strike with pushing LTV to extend benefits to laid-off
workers and retirees.
Ironically, it is the non-represented salaried workers who
have organized to demand a better deal. These former
salespeople, supervisors and others who were not unionized have
held rallies and filed a lawsuit against the company, stating
that they should be considered a secured creditor in the
bankruptcy proceedings.
In fact, the union, whose members are owed billions in
pension funds, should have been recognized all along as the
largest creditor, bigger than all the vendors and bankers to
whom LTV was indebted. Instead, the union leaders negotiated as
subordinates to these corporate creditors.
If the salaried workers can demand recognition as creditors,
why not the union and the workers it represents? As creditors,
and thus de facto owners prior to the sale, they could demand
all the proceeds of the sale go to rehiring the workers and
restoring health benefits to retirees.
The steelworkers recently mobilized large numbers of members
and supporters to go to demonstrate in Washington, D.C. Huge
ads in the local papers appealed to area workers to help "save
our steel." President George W. Bush then agreed to impose
large tariffs on some imported steel.
While the steel companies and unions alike welcomed this
step, it will not solve the worldwide crisis of capitalist
overproduction in steel and manufacturing. Setting off an
international trade war does not create jobs. In fact, steel
buyers are using the higher price of steel as an excuse to lay
off workers in their industries.
The other key demand of the Washington demonstration was
that the federal government use the funds from increased
tariffs to restore and secure benefits for retired
steelworkers. This demand was denied.
With over 30 U.S. steel companies now in bankruptcy, the
Steelworkers union has a crisis far bigger than LTV. It is not
too late to mount a militant strategy to control the future of
these mills and the tens of thousands of jobs they represent.
Failure to do so will only lead to more layoffs, more loss of
benefits, and far too many early deaths of stress-filled
workers.
Reprinted from the March 21, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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