Retirees Occupy Century Aluminum

By Leo W. Gerard
alternet 
February 1, 2012

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2012/01/31/retireesxd-occupy-century-aluminum/?utm

On Dec. 18, a dozen retirees, men and women in their
60s, 70s, even 80s, began occupying a median strip
along Route 33 in front of the closed Century Aluminum
smelter in Ravenswood, W.Va. In tents and under tarps,
a small group stays overnight, despite hypertension,
arthritis and other old age ailments. One has suffered
a stroke.

These vulnerable people expose themselves to weather
extremes although some have no health insurance at all.
Century cancelled it. That's why they're occupying
Century.

The retirees labored their entire lives for wages and
pensions comparably lower than those of other aluminum
workers. They did it believing they made those
sacrifices in exchange for good, lifelong health
coverage. Over the past two years, however, Century
evicted them, about 540 retirees altogether, from the
insurance plan.

The betrayal burns. Executives at Century, corporate 1
percenters, committed the same sort of treachery that
is being condemned by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators
representing the victimized 99 percent across the
country. Thus the retirees adopted the grandchildren's
protest tactic of encampment.

Century shuttered the 50-year-old Ravenswood smelter in
February of 2009, throwing 651 workers out of jobs.
Century, headquartered in Monterey, Calif., didn't go
bankrupt though. It still operates aluminum plants in
Kentucky, South Carolina and Iceland. And it didn't
immediately cancel promised insurance for retirees.

Nine months after the shutdown, it announced it would
terminate as of June 1, 2010 health benefits for
retirees eligible for Medicare. Then on Nov. 1, 2010,
Century told its retirees who weren't yet eligible for
Medicare that it would stop paying for their coverage
as of Jan. 1, 2011.

This revoking of earned benefits isn't an isolated
incident or a fluke. It is part of a pattern documented
by Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Ellen E.
Schultz in her new book "Retirement Heist." The
subtitle is, "How companies plunder and profit from the
nest eggs of American workers.

She describes in gory detail how corporations raided
worker pension accounts, siphoning off surpluses that
would be needed later to prop up plans damaged by the
Wall Street collapse. She provides detailed accounts of
executives gouging the funds to pay for their own
exorbitant retirement packages. She tells of corporate
executives ending retiree health insurance and freezing
pensions but deceptively calling the changes
improvements, so that CEOs could pump up company
profits with money that had been pledged to workers.

While breaking promises to workers and violating
contracts, these CEO 1 percenters falsely portrayed
themselves as beleaguered champions of workers,
valiantly attempting to preserve underfunded pensions.
Like Costa Concordia Captain Francesco Schettino saving
himself while abandoning passengers on his sinking
cruise ship, the captains of industry padded their own
pockets with pension and health care funds intended for
retirees, then deserted the workers. Schultz describes
the CEO scams this way in the book:

    "In reality, they're the silent pirates who looted
    the ships and left them to sink, along with the
    retirees, as they sailed away safely in their
    lifeboats."

Most of the Costa Concordia passengers survived, but
more than a dozen drowned. In West Virginia, most of
the retirees are still kicking. A leader among the
Century occupiers, Karen Gorrell, explained:

    "We may have one foot in the grave, but we are
    kicking like hell with the other."

But some have succumbed. Gorrell, wife of a 33-year
veteran aluminum worker, says Century has retiree blood
on its hands.

She tells of two tragedies. There's Bryce Earl Turner
who Karen encountered after her first meeting with
Century retirees in Ravenswood. He was scared and sick.
Both alternatives he faced - buying private insurance
or paying for his leukemia treatments out of pocket -
were way beyond his means. Losing his insurance was a
death sentence. The retirees worked desperately to get
him more time.

With the help of West Virginia's U.S. senators, Jay
Rockefeller and Joe Manchin, and a provision in Obama's
health care reform law, the retirees managed to get
coverage extended to Sept. 1, 2011. Bryce Earl Turner,
59, who worked 37 years at the aluminum plant, died the
next day.

The other tragedy is Sam McKinney. He attended a
meeting of the retirees on Feb. 14, 2011. He said he
feared losing the insurance because his wife was ill.
Karen recounts:

    "He was very emotional because he had taken his
    wife to Charleston to try to get some assistance
    with her health care costs and had been turned
    down."

He said, she recalled, that it was hard to believe that
in America after a person expended his usefulness to
industry, a corporation could coldly cast him aside as
if his life had no value.

After the meeting, Sam McKinney took his wife to
Outback Steakhouse in Parkersburg for Valentine's Day.
As they left, he collapsed and died in the parking lot.
Karen is sure the stress killed him. Wrongful stress.
Stress he'd not have experienced if Century was good
for its word.

Karen says of Turner and McKinney:

    "It was murder without a gun."

Though Century failed to fulfill its obligation to pay
for retiree health care, it handed its last CEO, Logan
W. Kruger, $4.9 million in 2010. That's twelve times
more than Americans pay their president, the leader of
the free world. Century gave Kruger another $6.2
million to leave last November. Still, he's suing for
$20 million on top of that. Century also is defending
against a lawsuit filed for the retirees by the United
Steelworkers (USW) union, which represented most of the
Century workers.

The USW hopes, however, to resolve the dispute outside
the courtroom, with the help of the retirees and West
Virginia lawmakers. The elderly agitators managed to
win the support of the state's U.S. senators, its
governor and its legislature. So last year when Century
went begging to the state for $20 million it claimed it
needed to re-open the Ravenswood smelter, the lawmakers
sent Century away empty handed with a directive to
settle with the retirees before seeking
reconsideration.

Not long afterward, Century booted Kruger, and the new
management team is negotiating with the USW and the
retirees.

The protesters don't have what they want yet, and
they're not leaving their tents until they do.

Century gave the retiree occupiers port-o-potties and
installed concrete barriers to prevent cars careening
on an icy Route 33 from plowing through the encampment.

Very nice gesture. But resuming payment for promised
health insurance would be a whole lot better.
_____________

Leo W. Gerard is the international president of the
United Steelworkers union. He is a member of the AFL-
CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor
federation's Public Policy Committee. President Barack
Obama recently appointed him to the President's
Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He
serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on
the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for
America's Future and the Economic Policy Institute
DeleteReply Forward RedirectView ThreadBlacklistWhitelistMessage SourceResumeSave asPrintHeaders

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate