Clinton Becomes Grinch to Steelworkers
Justin Arango wants a gift this Christmas that isn’t necessarily cool, computerized, flashy or furry. The degree of his desire became obvious Saturday, when he climbed aboard Santa’s knee.
“Can you find my dad a job?” the 5-year-old asked the local St. Nick, breaking every heart within earshot inside Weirton’s crowded community center.
Justin’s dad, Troy Arango, chokes up just a little when he tells this story. “Santa said it about tore him up,” he says.
Arango recently lost his job at the company where his father and grandfather had worked until retirement. He is among the roughly 900 steelworkers who have been laid off for the holidays in a small town carved into the hills of the Ohio Valley. They comprise almost one-fifth of the work force of the Weirton Steel Corp., the main employer for miles around.
They represent only a small fraction of the 600,000 American workers who have been furloughed in 1998, which some labor analysts believe will set a layoff record for this decade. It is a record that is being aided mainly by bad economies overseas and partly by the end of a taboo against trimming payrolls just when people are trimming their trees.
The situation is somewhat special here, however, because it demonstrates how public support for President Clinton can change when his most potent asset, the generally strong economy, suddenly vanishes. Or, in this case, collides with questions about his credibility.
Nobody here seems to care much whether the president had an affair or tried to cover it up. Instead, their hostility is focused like a laser beam on a single day in 1992 when, in the midst of their famous bus campaign through America’s heartland, then-Gov. Clinton and then-Sen. Al Gore sat on a stage in their flannel shirts and promised to protect Weirton workers from cheap steel from abroad.
Clinton’s Remarks on Videotape
Clinton, campaigning in a solidly Democratic town that has provided blue-collar backdrops for both John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, uttered remarks that have been preserved on plenty of local videocassettes, which people are eager to play to show how badly they’ve been betrayed.
“I want to first make sure we enforce strictly the anti-dumping laws and the laws against unfair subsidized steel being dumped into this country,” Clinton told the cheering audience on July 19 of that year, in the same hall where Justin Arango would pass his plaintive plea on to Santa Claus. “That’s not fair. If they’re doing things for their steel we’re not doing for ours, they shouldn’t have access to our markets.”
Failure to stop illegal dumping is exactly what people believe has lightened their grocery bags and put them in the unemployment line. Though the administration says it is working hard to convince its trading partners to control dumping, many here consider their plight the direct result of a broken promise.
“We went out and campaigned for him,” says Mark Glyptis, the union president. “He has completely turned his back on what he said.”
“There are promises to be kept,” says Democrat Tamara Pettit, the local state representative.
“They take it personally,” says Richard K. Riederer, the chief executive officer of Weirton Steel.
At the Independent Steelworkers Union hall, workers laid off in two swoops, first in November and then again last week, picked up frozen turkeys, packages of macaroni and other foods donated by local businesses and individuals. In interview after interview, the steelworkers held one man responsible.
“The president sat here in Weirton and said if you voted for him, these things wouldn’t happen,” says Norm Kidd, a 39-year-old father of two who got laid off after 12 years on the job.
The American steel industry maintains that producers from Asia, South America and Russia have been selling subsidized steel in this country below the market prices or production costs in their own countries, a violation of anti-dumping regulations. The House in October asked Clinton to bar steel imports from 10 nations for a year, yet he has been reluctant to do so.
Riederer was part of delegations that met with Gore last week and Clinton last month to air their grievances. The issue is complicated by the fact that most of the countries accused of dumping, such as Russia and South Korea, are in precarious economic positions. And big U.S. manufacturers are anxious to keep bargain-basement steel rolling in.
Clinton has pressed this country’s trading partners to voluntarily take steps to curb dumping in the United States, said Roger Salazar, a presidential spokesman. But he said the practice is widespread because so many markets for steel and other products have dried up because of the global economic crisis, making the strong U.S. economy even more attractive to countries trying to export their way out of trouble.
Issue Raised on Asian Journey
Clinton raised the steel-dumping issue with South Korea and Japan during his Asian trip last month, and the administration has promised to unveil a plan for curbing imports next month.
“The president and the vice president are very concerned about the impact this is having on our steel industry,” Salazar said.
Not concerned enough, people here say, because dumping continues and job losses mount. Steel executives want the administration to impose quotas and penalties now to halt the cuts, which are expected to reach 10,000 workers by year’s end.
“President Clinton by an executive order could stop the pain,” says Chamber of Commerce head Don Rigby. “He’s chosen not to do so.”
The big problem is the time it is taking the Commerce Department to investigate the complaints that the steel industry filed in September, Riederer said.
“They’re not easy issues to resolve overnight,” said Commerce Department spokesman Morrie Goodman. “It’s a global economy we live in. Issues are not isolated.”
The layoffs here are considered temporary, and some people could be called back early next year, though the company--which saw orders fall 25% this quarter--was making no guarantees. Many are worried that the cutbacks are a sign of worse things to come.
“The timing couldn’t be worse,” says appliance store owner John Koval, who says even some people who have not been laid off have canceled Christmas layaway orders. Koval figures his sales are off 8% to 10%. Everything here, he says, emanates from the steel plant. “A guy gets laid off at Weirton Steel, where does he go? McDonald’s? What they do is leave town.”
The plant is a sprawling, steam-spewing expanse that snakes through downtown like a colossal life-support system, something that does far more than supply the country with Campbell’s soup cans, among other things. Signs and banners hung in store windows and strung over streets urge locals to “Stand up for steel.”
Since the 1970s, the plant’s work force has shrunk from almost 13,000 to fewer than 5,000 significantly more productive workers. At one point the workers bought the plant themselves. Layoffs are a way of life, and some people with a dozen years or more find themselves losing their job for the second or third time.
Arango grew up in Weirton but found steadier work in Florida, where he worked as a welder in nuclear power plants for a dozen years. Yet he and his wife longed to raise their kids in this exceedingly friendly and peaceable little town of 22,000, about 45 minutes west of Pittsburgh, so they came back nearly four years ago when Weirton Steel was hiring.
Now he and his wife, Donna, have decided not to exchange gifts this year, though Justin and 14-year-old Dan will find presents under the tree. “You can’t deny the kids Christmas,” says Arango.
Luckily, Arango just shot a deer. That, plus a donated turkey and some strategic shopping, should stretch food staples over many meals. “A big thing of Velveeta goes a long, long way,” says Arango.
Benefits Are Gone After 6 Months
Unemployment and six months of supplemental benefits should approach about 65% of his pay, he says. Workers here average between $35,000 and $45,000 a year, by far the best wage around. Yet jobless and medical benefits for people with less than 20 years of employment run out in six months.
As the best employer around, some workers will wait seemingly forever for a chance to get back in. Alberta Miller was forced to quit her job in the mill in the 1950s, when women who married were routinely laid off, and got it back in 1989 when her husband died of cancer. She was laid off again two years ago and had been the next person in line to be called back this spring when the latest crisis hit.
All she wants to do is get back in long enough to beef up her retirement benefits.
“I’m 62 years old, and I wanted so badly to help with my pension,” says Miller, who was a dispatcher in the tin mill. “I loved working for Weirton Steel. I was so lucky to get back in after my husband died.”
