USW: Steelworker Retirees to Receive Health Care Benefit Checks

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	Steelworker Retirees to Receive Health Care Benefit Checks

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Innovative Union program helps National Steel retirees abandoned by bankruptcy process

Some 4,000 retirees, spouses and surviving spouses will receive benefit checks next week from a novel benefit trust fund established for former United Steelworkers (USW) and other union-represented employees of National Steel Corporation.

The benefit payments, amounting to approximately $450 per person, will reimburse eligible individuals for a portion of monthly premiums paid for Medicare Part B medical coverage during the first six months of 2007. Part B of Medicare is intended to fill some of the gaps in medical insurance coverage, primarily payment for physicians' services. In addition, services such as home health care, outpatient physical therapy, x-ray and diagnostic tests are covered.

“The Steelworkers are the only entity that did not abandon National Steel retirees when they were most vulnerable,” said USW vice president Tom Conway. “These folks worked their whole career, deferring wage increases for supposed lifetime benefits that evaporated when the company closed shop. The fact that the U.S. is basically the only industrial democracy in the world without a national health plan only compounded the problem.”

The trust fund, called a voluntary employees’ beneficiary association, or VEBA, was established in 1993 through negotiations between the USW and National Steel to help finance the cost of retiree health care coverage. National Steel declared bankruptcy in 2002, resulting in the loss of health care benefits in July 2003. The bankruptcy court assigned responsibility for the remaining VEBA assets, amounting to approximately $90 million, to a board of trustees who have utilized the assets to reinstate prescription drug coverage and death benefits, and now to help offset the cost of Medicare coverage.

Most retirees formerly worked at National Steel plants at Granite City, Mo., Portage, Ind., Detroit, Mich., and Keewatin, Minn. Other union participants include former members of the Chemical Workers, Plant Guards, Bricklayers and Hodcarriers unions.