Fight for What Was Earned: Solidarity USA, Corporate Bankruptcy and the Fight for the American Dream in the post-World War II Era

Abstract

In the wake of Youngstown's massive steel mill shutdowns in the late 1970s and early 1980s came a restructuring of the steel industry. Former steel producers such as Jones & Laughlin, Republic Steel and Lykes/Youngstown Sheet & Tube were swallowed up by the giant conglomerate LTV. LTV's takeover of faltering steel companies, beginning in the late 1960s, brought to the company enormous legacy costs in the form of private-welfare benefits such as health insurance and pensions. When LTV filed for bankruptcy, it was the retirees' health care benefits and pensions that bore the brunt of the corporation's restructuring. Newly dispossessed retirees had to draw upon their past experiences in order to work together to ameliorate their predicament. The focus of A Fight for What Was Earned: Solidarity USA, Corporate Bankruptcy and the Fight for the American Dream in the post-World War II Era is on how a segment of LTV retirees were able to band together and form an organization designed to fight hegemonic, detached and non-empathetic institutions for their pension and benefits, which were taken away from them or diminished after the Ling Temco Vought Corporation's (LTV) July 17, 1986 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. It is my contention that in the midst of catastrophic bankruptcy LTV retirees formed Solidarity USA, a democratically run organization outside the control of the United Steelworkers of America, in order to use direct action to effectuate pro-retiree decisions by institutional leaders. Ultimately, this gave steel retirees a voice and a platform from which to redeem lost pension and health care benefits during the course of LTV's Chapter 11 restructuring.