More than 400,000 retirees and their families are dependent on the steel industry for health care benefits. Bankruptcies of steel companies around the country have put retired Americans at risk of losing their benefits. The bill would create a Steelworker Retiree Health Care Fund, administered by the Department of Labor, to help steel companies pay for their retirees' health insurance. Illegal dumping of foreign steel threatens to take a serious toll on the citizens of Lake and Porter counties in Indiana, said Douglas W. Olson, mayor of Portage, Indiana. After spending an entire lifetime in the steel industry, retirees are now in jeopardy of losing their hard-earned health care benefits.
American steel is produced in world-class plants.
Using innovative production techniques, today it takes 3.6 hours of labor to produce one ton of steel, down from 10 hours in 1980. Since that time, steel production has increased at an annual rate of 5.4 percent higher than almost any other sector of the economy. However, the flood of imports has severely depressed the price of steel. Hot-rolled steel prices are at their lowest levels in 20 years, down 32 percent in the last year alone. Yet the surplus of foreign steel being dumped in the U.S. market is rendering these competitive achievements meaningless.