Doing History from the Bottom Up by Staughton Lynd

Author:Staughton Lynd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, ebook
ISBN: 978-1-60846-453-1
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2014-11-15T16:00:00+00:00

“We Are All We’ve Got”:

Building a Retiree Movement

in Youngstown, Ohio

Introduction

On July 17, 1986, LTV Steel Company, the second-largest producer of steel in the United States, declared bankruptcy and immediately cut off health and life insurance benefits for approximately forty-eight thousand retirees. Within days, retirees of steel mills in and around Youngstown, Ohio, formed an organization called Solidarity USA to fight for promised pension and medical benefits.

LTV’s decision to stop paying medical insurance claims when it filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code had catastrophic results. Retiree Roy St. Clair came home from the hospital on July 17. He spent a day frantically seeking alternative medical insurance. When he experienced a recurrence of his heart symptoms, he did not seek hospitalization because he did not know how he could pay the bill. He died a few hours later.

Delores Hrycyk, a lector in her Catholic church and wife of a retiree with thirty-six years at Republic Steel, telephoned radio talk shows and called a rally in downtown Youngstown for Saturday, July 26. A thousand people attended.

Several days later, hundreds of Youngstown-area retirees, under Hrycyk’s leadership, met in a Youngstown suburb to form an organization. The suggestion was made from the floor that the group resembled Polish Solidarity. That’s right, Hrycyk responded. Thinking out loud, she added, “Let’s call it Solidarity USA.”

The Attorneys’ Story

Our office was overwhelmed with clients coming in and phoning. One woman told us she had enough heart medicine for fifteen days, and when that ran out she could not afford to buy more.

We are not bankruptcy lawyers. We could not get the help we needed from people who were bankruptcy lawyers. Many of the questions having to do with medical and life insurance were outside their experience. Our questions were not ones where there was already black-letter or established law.

Alice asked a bankruptcy lawyer whether a hospital bill incurred after the bankruptcy by a person who retired before the bankruptcy was a postpetition or a prepetition debt. The obligation to pay arose prepetition, but there was no way to know prepetition whether or when the hospitalization would occur or what its cost would be. Whichever way she presented the argument, pre- or postpetition, the bankruptcy lawyer replied, “That’s a good argument.”

Alice. During the early months after LTV declared bankruptcy, we would go to meetings with LTV retirees at which the level of anger was high. At times I was afraid the tension would erupt into violence. I did not know what to do or say. But as time went on, we knew Ralph would say, “It’s time to get out the baseball bats.” Some people would cheer and some would laugh. But, in a way, Ralph spoke for all of us: it’s time we did something to make a change in the situation. After a time I realized that there were others in Solidarity who reacted as I did when violence against person or property was suggested.

Staughton. How do retirees have any clout, any power? They can’t strike.

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