Steelworkers face bankruptcy

While some workers in Indiana's troubled steel industry were dissatisfied with the targeted 30 percent tariffs President Bush ordered on imported steel, others were willing to take what they could get.\n"We wanted 40 percent. President Bush did not keep his word," said John Emerson of Gary, who worked at LTV Corp. for 34 of his 62 years.\nBush stopped short of giving the industry the 40 percent across-the-board tariffs it sought and declined to support an industry-proposed $10 billion bailout of pension and health care benefits for retired steelworkers whose companies have gone bankrupt.\n"I think it's a half-hearted approach to a very, very serious problem," said Dennis Henry, president of a United Steelworkers union local in East Chicago.\nHowever, steel workers said Bush's action would provide some relief.\n"We didn't get everything we wanted, but we got a very good portion of what we wanted," said Jim Robinson, a Steelworkers union district director. "This is clearly going to be significantly helpful in getting the industry back on track."\nThe union's next battle will be to protect workers' health benefits when their employers seek bankruptcy protection, Robinson said.\nRetirees, including 60,000 from LTV who will lose their health benefits this month because of the company's bankruptcy reorganization, are the "real victims" of cheap imported steel, Henry said.\nIndiana has lost 7,000 of the nearly 45,000 steel worker jobs just before low-priced foreign steel began flooding the country in late 1997. Indiana produces a quarter of the nation's steel, mostly along Lake Michigan.\nLow-priced imported steel has driven domestic steelmakers into their deepest troubles since World War II. More than 30 steel companies have slipped into bankruptcy since 1997.\nWL Ross & Co. LLC of New York bought bankrupt LTV's steel operations at auction last month, agreeing to pay $80 million cash for the company and $47.5 million for inventory.\nSteve Miller, chief executive officer of Bethlehem Steel, which sought bankruptcy in October, said the tariffs will give his company and the industry time to regroup. Burns Harbor Councilwoman Myrtle Zehner, who is laid off from the company, agreed.\n"It may not be like it used to be, but I think we're going to survive," she said. "Without the tariffs we were dead. We would have ceased to even try"