Weirton Steel Retiree Benefits Terminated

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

http://www.wtov9.com/news/2923722/detail.html

WHEELING, WV -- Bankruptcy Judge Edward Friend approved Weirton Steel's request to terminate health care benefits for Weirton Steel's ten-thousand retirees during a court proceeding in Wheeling.

"It's a terribly disappointing, sad day that promised benefits won't be paid to all retired people," Dick Pollard, Bankruptcy Attorney for the Independent Steelworkers Union told NEWS 9.

another link...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/weir-m13.shtml


Does this make anyone else as sick as it does me? I almost puked when I heard it on NPR the other day. Funny how there is very little coverage of this, huh?

MODS: I know this is from a couple of days ago. I searched and did not see any mention of this, and felt it was VERY important.

[UpInArms]

1. so this is how employees

are treated after they have paid into a system and supported the system and done all of the things that are recommended for their retirement?

Left with dust :mad:

Let's hear what Meanspin has to say (yeah right- like that POS even cares :mad:)

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. Where is the AFL-CIO on this? Where is the "liberal" media?

NPR had a short human interest story on yesterday...

http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=1773329

[madrchsod]

3. the workers knew this was coming since

this has been going on for years in the steel working industry. weirton hung on for along time fighting the good fight against foreign steel but they lost. nobody gives a shit anymore about the american worker and sooner or later this country will pay the price-we`ll become argentina.

[cmd]

4. It has been well covered in the upper Ohio Valley

This will have a definite impact on the tri-state area. The steel workers and the union have fought a good fight. It is sad to see that the battle was not won.

The new owners of Weirton may pick up some of the benefits. That remains to be seen. It is very depressing to drive though Weirton and see the enormous complex sitting almost completly idle. The whole town has suffered.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

5. Not nationally. Don;t you think this court decision will become

every greed head boss' new business plan? Spend all the money on whatever you want, then when the end comes, ditch the people who made you the money in the first place.

I mean, shit, the guarantee of retirement benefits is what keeps this country from being, oh, Haiti, or Chad, or China.

Sorry, this nauseates me to no end.

[cmd]

7. Weirton was an employee owned company

When the company faced backruptcy about a decade ago, the employees bought the company. This was not about greed. These were good guys trying to make a go of it in a tough world. Cheap steel imports (dumping) was the straw that broke their back. These good men, union workers all, tried their best to make a go of it. I'm especially sad because many are my friends and relatives.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

10. Yeah, but their problems stemmed from before they

were employee owned, no?
And the buyout did not generate enough capital to re-tool the plant to take advantage of recycling, which has apparently sealed their fate.

[cmd]

12. Of course they inherited problems

The company wouldn't have filed bankruptcy if they were doing well. My point is that the workers accepted the challenge. In doing so, the problems became their problems.

[Serendipity36]

6. What can you say?

This is what happens when Unions price their employees' employers out of business with unsustainable benefits and wages. They forced this hand in the steel industry by forcing costs of labor so high as to make their business uncompetive and bankrupt.

Too bad. the greed of the unions and their minions cost them their jobs and retiree's pensions.

If people can't accept the fact that businesses are competitive enterprises and are unwilling to adjust to market forces with repect to costs of doing business then they deserve everything they get including losing their jobs.

[cmd]

8. Sorry, Serendipity, your story won't play

Weirton was an employee owned company. It wasn't the union that did them in. They were the union.

[PA Democrat]

11. Yeah those union workers

should just shut and and accept wages of $2 a day, like they do in China.

:crazy:

[madrchsod]

13. i take it you`ve never worked in a steel mill??/

if you did you wouldn`t make such a stupid statement, i`d like to see you crawl on top of a melt furnace to repair something and look into the bowel's of hell,or come in to work and chip slag off the floor and find out a guy was killed the night because a furnace blew up and showered him with molten steel. you want more examples-just how much money do you think people like us steelworkers deserve? i`d wait till you grow up and find out what it`s like to work your ass off in incredible heat and bone chilling cold..but i don`t have that much time

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

14. All the more reason this is a disgusting thing to happen

I don't care if the employees did it to themselves or not. When you are old and retired, medical benefits you earned workiing for 30, 40, 50 years mean a lot.

This is disgraceful, I do not give two shits whose fault it is.

[WatchWhatISay]

16. Yeah, and hey, Seredippy

Remember when you Conservatives argued that we can't repeal the tax cuts, we must make them permanent because people and companies need to plan for the future? What say you apply that theory to this situation?

[doc03]

20. In 1948 Harry Truman tried to get a national health care plan

The Republicans in Congress wouldn't go along with it. So the compromise was that health care would be bargained for in union contracts in lew of wages. At that time most industries were unionized and that is why we had a middle class. It is your kind of thinking that has almost eliminated the unions and the middle class.
Unions have their bad points at times but I am proud to be a union member, it has given me a good income and benefits over the years.

[bleedingheart]

22. Tell me of the greed of the Corporate Pigs like Carnegie and Frick

You can go ahead and work in a Steel Mill without the protectionof a union and see how long you last.
My father was a union steel worker and it was hard grueling work.
The unions didn't ruin the mills.

The mills of Pittsburgh for instance gave Carnegie such a fortune that he built libraries and social halls all around the country but all of it was done on the backs of workers who didn't have any security. Some of those workers didn't have the luxury of going to a library because they were exhausted from long shifts and many could not read....yet those illiterate workers were smart enough to protect themselves with a union!

I hope Carnegie and Frick are stoking the fires of hell!

[doc03]

24. I would suggest a movie for anyone that is anti-union to rent "Matewan"

Also PBS did a great documentary on Carnegie and the Homestead massacre few years ago.

[w4rma]

9. More casualties of "free"-trade. (n/t)

[tabasco]

15. West Virginia went to Bush in the last election.

I hope they have come to their senses.

[MaineDem]

17. As a retiree on a pension this frightens me to death!

My health insurance premium has gone up and my co-pay has gone up but the company still pays the bulk of it all. How can retired people survive if these benefits are pulled out from under them? THis is such a bad trend. I sure hope it doesn't continue.

[cmd]

18. I'm feeling the same way

My husband and I are both on pensions. His health insurance premium has gone from ten dollars a month to over two hundred and sixty. Last month he had a hospital bill that was between three and four hundred. Insurance paid eleven dollars of it. We are paying much more and getting much less. It scares me.

[doc03]

19. Health insurance only part of it? The PBGC is also running a $16.5

billion deficit and the Bush administration said they won't support a bailout! Weirton Steel's union was not a member of the USWA and I don't think the AFL/CIO. It doesn't really matter though since we have went through the same thing over the last few years at the USWA companies. Also WV went for Bush because Clinton came to Weirton in 1992 and promised to stop illegal imports and did nothing. The VP of the Independent Steelworkers Union praised Bush the other day for giving them a chance with the steel tariffs! So along with that and the gun issue don't count on WV to vote for Kerry this time either.

[keithyboy]

21. I think this is a huge story for middle and lowe income workers to know

It is an indication that giving your life to "company store" is no longer honorable or respected. At any given time, this kind of thing can happen to any poor working family. The American "work ethic" is a myth perpurtrated by the corporations.

[doc03]

23. This is nothing new in the steel industry

The same happened to the health insurance at Bethlehem, LTV, Wheeling Pittsburgh and many others over the last few years. Also Weirton and many others had their defined benefit pensions dumped on the PBGC. And now the PBGC is running a deficit. This is just a tip of the iceberg, the same thing is going to happen to SS if we don't get rid of Bush.