After laying off 500 workers at a blast furnace earlier in the month in Cleveland, its home base, the company is now putting a question mark over wages and benefits of its workforce as well as pensions of 70,000 retirees.

In a company press release Bricker claimed that "LTV and its employees across the nation have been betrayed by the government's reluctance to take action against the 'dumping' of unfairly priced steel in the U.S. market by foreign competitors. America is in danger of becoming as dependent on foreign steel as we are on foreign oil."

He then took aim at the company's workforce and retirees: "Every integrated steel company in America carries an enormous burden for our country by providing health care and benefit programs for millions of Americans and their families.... The high fixed cost of these programs places LTV at a severe competitive disadvantage in the new global steel market." The company says it pays $200 million annually into these programs.

A 25-year-old worker at the Indiana Harbor Works plant in East Chicago, who did not want to give his name, said LTV "is always wanting more concessions from us workers and then they try to blame us for their problems. They even say [the bankruptcy] is because we're union. Well, there are nonunion plants they're mismanaging into the ground." Most of LTV's plants are organized by the United Steelworkers of America (USWA).

"It's not our fault," said Rafael Dominguez, a 29-year veteran of the Indiana Harbor Works plant, where some 3,500 workers are employed. "It's bad management coupled with this worsening economy. They'll probably try to freeze our wages coming out of this round," he said, referring to the company's first bankruptcy filing in 1986, which lasted until 1993.

"Nobody in the plant feels any security," said Lucille Robbins, a 50-year-old woman who has worked at the Indiana plant for seven years.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer added uncertainty for workers when it reported they "should continue getting paychecks without incident" but "the bankruptcy court could put limits on past wages or accrued vacation or sick time." The paper wrote that LTV's pension plan is underfunded by $600 million, meaning "workers would be guaranteed a certain percentage of their benefits."

One option Bricker said the company is exploring is "alternative ways to maintain health-care benefit programs for employees and retirees." Christopher Panos, a bankruptcy attorney in Boston, told the Plain Dealer, "There are a lot of protections built into the code for retirees. There is reason to be concerned, but there is protection."

With $4 billion in sales in 1999, LTV claims it currently has $5.81 billion in assets and $4.73 billion in liabilities plus $1 billion in long-term debt. The company has not made a profit since 1997. Stock shares, which in 1994 traded at $16, peaked at $4.31 in 2000, and closed at the end of this year at 34 cents.  
 
Overproduction and competition
The steel industry is facing a classic case of capitalist overproduction, which is sharpening competition and driving prices down. Eight other U.S. steel companies have filed for bankruptcy court protection in the last two years, including Wheeling-Pittsburgh in November. As worldwide consumption of steel has grown over the past several years, production has grown even faster. In the United States, hot-rolled steel band is selling for about $250 a ton, down from $380 a ton last April.

London's Financial Times noted, "Poor conditions for the sector have nothing to do with low demand. Just the opposite: steel consumption worldwide is likely to rise 5.5 percent this year, the highest figure since 1997." The industry is producing 60 million tons more steel than is being purchased, the paper reports. With a strong dollar, U.S. exports face a competitive disadvantage on the world market.

In an attempt to protect the enormous U.S. market, steel companies have launched antidumping cases against 11 countries, charging that hot-rolled steel is being sold in the United States at less than production costs. Some 100 U.S. steel companies urged the Clinton administration to implement protectionist measures, including curbing imports, exacting higher duties, and giving direct assistance to steel companies.

The Clinton administration is already urging banks, such as the Export Import Bank, to stop all loans that might increase world steel output. U.S. commerce secretary Norman Mineta, for example, pressed the bank's president to stop a loan to China's Benxi Iron and Steel Company last month on the basis it would help add 1.5 million metric tons of new hot-rolled steel capacity.

This line is being echoed by USWA officials, such as Ohio district director David McCall. At a Cleveland meeting of USWA Local 185, he exonerated LTV management of any responsibility for the company's current economic crisis, stating that "dumping" of foreign steel is to blame. "LTV has been forced into bankruptcy because of our government's failure to enforce trade laws in this country," he said.

David Phelps, head of the American Institute of International Steel, a business organization representing steel importers, chided mini-mill steel producer Nucor, which has been making a tidy profit, charging the company with "the use of trade laws to manipulate the U.S. market" in order to drive up domestic prices, increasing its profits.

LTV says it may pursue loans from the federal Emergency Steel Loan Guarantee Program, in which the government secures 85 percent of the credit extended by a commercial lender. LTV also notified the Indiana city of East Chicago that it will not pay its 2001 property tax, which amounts to roughly $20 million dollars. In Cleveland, councilman Bill Patman said that the city is willing to give LTV more tax abatements on top of the $800 million the city has forgiven since 1988.

Another top employer for 128 years, Chicago-based Montgomery Ward, said it will also file for bankruptcy and close its 250 stores and 10 distribution centers in 30 states. Some 30,000 workers will lose their jobs.

Lisa-Marie Rottach is a garment worker and member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees in Chicago. Henry Hillenbrand, a former member of USWA Local 185 at LTV's Cleveland Works, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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