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Laid-off, retired LTV workers feel bite of globalization Larry Oakes DULUTH -- A rally today in Virginia, Minn., will start a week of events organized to call attention to the loss of jobs, pensions and health insurance by a growing number of workers in the iron-ore and steel industries. The "Fight for Justice" rally, with speeches by union and political leaders, comes less than two weeks after 4,000 retired and laid-off taconite miners from northeastern Minnesota learned that they face reductions in pensions because of LTV Steel Corp.'s bankruptcy. "LTV is pulling an Enron," said Kevin Fahey, Stand Up for Steel coordinator for the United Steelworkers of America district office in Eveleth. "They're reorganizing on the backs of the people who built the company." Besides today's rally and one in Duluth on Wednesday, Iron Range union leaders are organizing bus trips to Washington, D.C., next week. They're going to demand that the federal government delay the loss of benefits and impose tariffs on foreign steel that's imported at prices lower than U.S. producers can afford to sell it. One of the buses will stop in the home districts of several congressmen who are undecided on the tariff issue, Fahey said. In January 2001, LTV shut down its LTV Steel Mining Co. in Hoyt Lakes, leaving 1,400 people without jobs. Steelworkers union officials said LTV assured them at the time that the bankrupt company's pension plan for the Hoyt Lakes plant wouldn't be affected. In December, after LTV stopped making steel, a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved a plan that allows the corporation to stop paying health-insurance premiums and supplemental unemployment pay at the end of February for laid-off workers, and in June for retirees. More than 50,000 former employees and their families will be affected, including at least 7,000 from Minnesota. Pension nightmare Then, earlier this month, the corporation told the union that the LTV Steel Mining Co. pension fund had about $50 million less than the $260 million required for full pensions. LTV is in the process of turning that fund over to the federal government's Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp., which would make pension payments, reduced by 35 to 50 percent, Fahey said. "A person who is 48 and worked 30 years at LTV has a pension of $1,950 [per month]," he said. "If this happens, they will get $953 a month and no health care." Some workers would lose even more. Dan Brakke of Palo, Minn., who worked 15 years at the Hoyt Lakes mine, said that under a "rule of 70" in the workers' contract, he would have been eligible for a pension of $1,400 a month starting in two years, when he's 55. At that point, his age plus his years with the company would equal 70. But the federal agency that may take over the payments doesn't recognize the rule of 70, Brakke said. "If they take over, I won't get a pension until I'm 62, and then it will be only $400," said Brakke, who is divorced and helps support a 6-year-old daughter. "I'm a veteran who served in Vietnam for a year and in the Persian Gulf for five months," he said. "Now, the government is going to help me -- right out onto the street." The steelworkers union is urging the federal government to delay terminating LTV's pension fund for a year to give the union and public officials a chance to find a better alternative. The union wants the federal government to impose tariffs on imported steel and use part of the proceeds to help the 47,000 steelworkers and miners who have lost their jobs, and the 600,000 retirees who could lose their benefits as steel corporation bankruptcies mount. Opponents of tariffs say they would cause steel prices to rise and wipe out even greater numbers of jobs in steel-consuming industries. Those industries, like the steelworkers and miners, are focusing on Washington, where President Bush faces a March 6 deadline to decide whether to impose tariffs. -- Larry Oakes is at loakes@startribune.com . © Copyright 2001 Star Tribune. All rights reserved. |