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WHEELING – Hundreds of Upper Ohio Valley steelworkers displaced before or after RG Steel’s 2012 bankruptcy filing will likely receive less than $1,600 each for owed vacation and severance payments after a federal judge approved a settlement between the firm and its creditors last week.
RG Steel was the last company to collectively own the facilities that once operated under the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp. banner in Mingo Junction, Steubenville, Martins Ferry, Yorkville and Beech Bottom, as well as the Follansbee coke plant and the downtown Wheeling corporate headquarters. Some of these plants had already closed by the time RG assumed ownership in 2011.
At the time of its bankruptcy, RG also owned the large mill at Sparrows Point, Md., as well as a plant in Warren, Ohio.
“The United Steelworkers did a good job in making the best of a bad situation. It’s sad that it had to come to this, and unfortunate that this has affected so many hard-working people,” David Boyd, a USW Local 9477 retiree who was employed at Sparrows Point, said.
“This settlement doesn’t make up for the fact that so many people have suffered,” Boyd added. “But if we hadn’t had the union fighting for us, we could have ended up with nothing.”
Under the terms of the settlement, there will be about $6.3 million for owed vacation and severance payments to be distributed among the 4,000 displaced workers. The settlement also includes $445,590.31 for a voluntary employee beneficiary association for those who worked at the Wheeling-Pitt mills.
Other disbursements from the settlement include: $2.4 million to a voluntary employee beneficiary association for workers at the Warren mill; $990,790 to the Steelworkers Health & Welfare Fund to cover more than $6 million in claims; more than $814,000 to the Steelworkers Pension Trust; $480,000 to cover unpaid medical claims; and about $54,000 in severance for workers at an Allenport, Pa., mill that closed in 2008.
The Mingo facility, closed since 2009, is the largest of the former Wheeling-Pitt plants. Buffalo, N.Y.-based Frontier Industrial gained the title to the entire Mingo property – including the $115 million electric arc furnace installed in late 2004 – for just $20 million in summer 2012.
The former Wheeling-Pitt plant in Yorkville is now the Yorkville Energy Services Terminal, a facility that can be used as a service hub for the Marcellus and Utica shale drilling industry.
Esmark Inc. purchased the Yorkville facility for $4.7 million during the 2012 RG bankruptcy. Ohio Gov. John Kasich joined Esmark Chairman and CEO James P. Bouchard at the plant in October 2012 to announce the acquisition and plans for a restart. But Esmark never got anything going in Yorkville, as the company eventually decided on the services terminal project.
Esmark previously owned all the former Wheeling-Pitt facilities before selling them to Severstal for $1.23 billion in July 2008. Severstal, after idling the Steubenville and Mingo Junction plants in 2009, later sold these plants to RG Steel.
As for the remaining former Wheeling-Pitt facilities, the rusting structures of the former Steubenville plant are now gone, thanks to the demolition efforts of Wheeling-based Strauss Industries. The long-time Wheeling-Pitt corporate headquarters in downtown Wheeling was eventually sold to Access Infrastructures for $800,000.
Wheeling businessmen Quay Mull and Joseph N. Gompers purchased the Martins Ferry mill land for $2 million. It is now home to the 4K Industrial Park, which houses a business that processes drilling and fracking waste drawn from the natural gas industry.