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These vulnerable people expose themselves to weather extremes although some have no health insurance at all. Century cancelled it. That’s why they’re occupying Century.

The retirees labored their entire lives for wages and pensions comparably lower than those of other aluminum workers. They did it believing they made those sacrifices in exchange for good, lifelong health coverage. Over the past two years, however, Century evicted them, about 540 retirees altogether, from the insurance plan.

The betrayal burns. Executives at Century, corporate 1 percenters, committed the same sort of treachery that is being condemned by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators representing the victimized 99 percent across the country. Thus the retirees adopted the grandchildren’s protest tactic of encampment.

Century shuttered the 50-year-old Ravenswood smelter in February of 2009, throwing 651 workers out of jobs. Century, headquartered in Monterey, Calif., didn’t go bankrupt though. It still operates aluminum plants in Kentucky, South Carolina and Iceland. And it didn’t immediately cancel promised insurance for retirees.

Nine months after the shutdown, it announced it would terminate as of June 1, 2010 health benefits for retirees eligible for Medicare.  Then on Nov. 1, 2010, Century told its retirees who weren’t yet eligible for Medicare that it would stop paying for their coverage as of Jan. 1, 2011.

This revoking of earned benefits isn’t an isolated incident or a fluke. It is part of a pattern documented by Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Ellen E. Schultz in her new book “Retirement Heist.”  The subtitle is, “How companies plunder and profit from the nest eggs of American workers.

She describes in gory detail how corporations raided worker pension accounts, siphoning off surpluses that would be needed later to prop up plans damaged by the Wall Street collapse. She provides detailed accounts of executives gouging the funds to pay for their own exorbitant retirement packages. She tells of corporate executives ending retiree health insurance and freezing pensions but deceptively calling the changes improvements, so that CEOs could pump up company profits with money that had been pledged to workers.

While breaking promises to workers and violating contracts, these CEO 1 percenters falsely portrayed themselves as beleaguered champions of workers, valiantly attempting to preserve underfunded pensions. Like Costa Concordia Captain Francesco Schettino saving himself while abandoning passengers on his sinking cruise ship, the captains of industry padded their own pockets with pension and health care funds intended for retirees, then deserted the workers. Schultz describes the CEO scams this way in the book:

“In reality, they’re the silent pirates who looted the ships and left them to sink, along with the retirees, as they sailed away safely in their lifeboats.”

Most of the Costa Concordia passengers survived, but more than a dozen drowned. In West Virginia, most of the retirees are still kicking. A leader among the Century occupiers, Karen Gorrell, explained:

“We may have one foot in the grave, but we are kicking like hell with the other.”

But some have succumbed. Gorrell, wife of a 33-year veteran aluminum worker, says Century has retiree blood on its hands.

She tells of two tragedies. There’s Bryce Earl Turner who Karen encountered after her first meeting with Century retirees in Ravenswood. He was scared and sick. Both alternatives he faced — buying private insurance or paying for his leukemia treatments out of pocket — were way beyond his means. Losing his insurance was a death sentence. The retirees worked desperately to get him more time.

With the help of West Virginia’s U.S. senators, Jay Rockefeller and Joe Manchin, and a provision in Obama’s health care reform law, the retirees managed to get coverage extended to Sept. 1, 2011. Bryce Earl Turner, 59, who worked 37 years at the aluminum plant, died the next day.

The other tragedy is Sam McKinney. He attended a meeting of the retirees on Feb. 14, 2011. He said he feared losing the insurance because his wife was ill. Karen recounts:

“He was very emotional because he had taken his wife to Charleston to try to get some assistance with her health care costs and had been turned down.”

He said, she recalled, that it was hard to believe that in America after a person expended his usefulness to industry, a corporation could coldly cast him aside as if his life had no value.

After the meeting, Sam McKinney took his wife to Outback Steakhouse in Parkersburg for Valentine’s Day. As they left, he collapsed and died in the parking lot.  Karen is sure the stress killed him. Wrongful stress. Stress he’d not have experienced if Century was good for its word.

Karen says of Turner and McKinney:

“It was murder without a gun.”

Though Century failed to fulfill its obligation to pay for retiree health care, it handed its last CEO, Logan W. Kruger, $4.9 million in 2010. That’s twelve times more than Americans pay their president, the leader of the free world. Century gave Kruger another $6.2 million to leave last November. Still, he’s suing for $20 million on top of that. Century also is defending against a lawsuit filed for the retirees by the United Steelworkers (USW) union, which represented most of the Century workers.

The USW hopes, however, to resolve the dispute outside the courtroom, with the help of the retirees and West Virginia lawmakers. The elderly agitators managed to win the support of the state’s U.S. senators, its governor and its legislature. So last year when Century went begging to the state for $20 million it claimed it needed to re-open the Ravenswood smelter, the lawmakers sent Century away empty handed with a directive to settle with the retirees before seeking reconsideration.

Not long afterward, Century booted Kruger, and the new management team is negotiating with the USW and the retirees.

The protesters don’t have what they want yet, and they’re not leaving their tents until they do.

Century gave the retiree occupiers port-o-potties and installed concrete barriers to prevent cars careening on an icy Route 33 from plowing through the encampment.

Very nice gesture. But resuming payment for promised health insurance would be a whole lot better.

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Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union. Follow @USWBlogger

The workers understood the link between their livelihoods long term and Cooper’s success. Dedicated and loyal, they accepted the cutbacks. Soon afterward, city and state officials granted Cooper millions in subsidies.

Management didn’t share in the workers’ and taxpayers’ pain, though. The top dogs rewarded themselves with millions in pay increases and a shiny new corporate jet.

Cooper punk’d the workers and taxpayers.

This isn’t an aberration. It’s a pattern. Corporate executives, the 1 percenters, slash workers’ wages, then give themselves big bonuses. CEOs tell mayors and governors their businesses are in such dire shape that they may close or move offshore. Government officials dutifully shovel truckloads of taxpayer cash into CEO hands, then the CEOs grant themselves more perks. The television show Punk’d, in which actor Ashton Kutcher humiliates famous people, took a five-year hiatus. The 1 percenters gave workers and taxpayers no such break. Punking the 99 percent for profit has only escalated.

At Cooper, 1,050 members of the United Steelworkers union in Findlay, Ohio agreed in 2008 to give the company $30 million in concessions when executives cried destitute at the negotiation table. The next year, after witnessing the same sad song and dance, Ohio officials began transferring $2.5 million from taxpayer pockets to corporate coffers.

Between 2008 and 2011, though, Cooper awarded its executives two pay hikes and double bonuses. The year after Cooper told workers they had to suffer for the company, Cooper CEO Roy Armes got a 50 percent pay increase. The next year, in the middle of the recession, his bump was 19 percent, giving him a package worth $4.7 million in 2010.

Cooper 1 percenters also bought themselves a corporate jet and, for $17 million, a Serbian tire company. Since January of 2009, Cooper posted $360 million in income before taxes.

The workers who took the cutbacks and taxpayers who subsidized the company got punk’d.

Then, this year, Cooper top dogs went back to the bargaining table with Steelworkers. Despite the big profits, they demanded more concessions. They planned to punk those workers again.

When workers in Findlay rejected a vague proposal from the company but offered to continue working under the terms of the old contract while talks continued, Cooper locked them out.

This would be disturbing if Cooper were a rogue company. But what’s more alarming is that it’s not. Profitable companies routinely blackmail workers and townspeople.  They threaten to close or move to Mexico or China if workers won’t take cuts and if politicians won’t grant tax breaks.  After the demands are met, the corporate executives shower themselves with cash.

Think of hugely-profitable Wal-Mart. The largest retailer in the world told its workers in October that it would substantially cut health care coverage for part-timers and significantly increase premiums full-timers must pay. By contrast, Wal-Mart’s CEO Mike Duke made sure he wouldn’t suffer. He had the board of directors change the way his pay is calculated when it looked like declines in sales at some stores would mean less compensation for him.

No matter his performance, the CEO is richly rewarded. No matter their performance, workers get cut. Punk’d.

This holds true on Wall Street too, where bank performance this year was lackluster. After declines in bank stock value, mid-level workers learned in recent weeks their bonuses would shrink. But not so for CEOs. Shares in Citigroup, for example, fell 44 percent, but its CEO, Vakram S. Pandit, was awarded a $16.7 million retention bonus as well as $3.7 million in stock while many Citigroup workers were told last week they would receive no bonus or a small one.

Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital is another example. It operates just like other vulture capital firms.   They buy struggling companies, borrow against the assets, fire workers, cut the pay and benefits of the remaining ones, and take a huge chunk of that money and give it to vulture capital executives. Often the purchased companies, struggling under the excessive debt, go bankrupt, killing all the workers’ jobs.

The Wall Street Journal evaluated 77 deals Bain made while Romney was there.  Of those companies, 22 percent closed or went bankrupt within eight years of the Bain investment.  Even so, Bain executives made millions for themselves off those deals.

At the same time, Bain took handouts from taxpayers. Phil Mattera of Dirt Diggers Digest provides a list of tens of millions in taxpayer-financed subsidies Bain companies collected.

Workers and taxpayers got punk’d.

This isn’t a criticism of free enterprise or capitalism. It’s about civic duty and patriotism. A corporation has obligations to more than just its executives and shareholders – especially when the Supreme Court contends it’s a person. Every person is beholden to the community and country that provide nurture, protection and support. A corporation is accountable to its workers, its customers, its community, its country.

The executives who run American corporations have forgotten that. Or they reject it. These are the same CEOs who rail against regulation ensuring public safety and laws ensuring worker rights. They don’t want to be told they can’t pollute or let explosive methane collect in mines.  And they don’t want to be told they can’t fire workers just for trying to form unions.

A little more regulation and a little less taxpayer subsidy might remind corporations of their obligations.

Workers and communities aren’t asking for the power to punk employers. They’re just asking not to be punk’d.

***

Tell Cooper to end the lockout!

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Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union. Follow @USWBlogger

For the past year, since Republicans took the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, they’ve behaved like young thugs, extorting Democrats to get what they wanted. Employing the blackmail techniques of schoolyard gangs, House Republicans repeatedly threatened to hurt the American people and the American government if Democrats didn’t submit.

Then President Obama confronted them. In recent weeks, he finally internalized and implemented the advice of American parents on dealing with bullies. He stood his ground. He called the GOP bluff on the payroll tax. And they backed down. He recess appointed four officials, defying GOP attempts to thwart service to American workers and borrowers.

Apparently, it’s a new day in Washington, one in which Democrats, who control the presidency and the majority in the U.S. Senate, are fed up and not going to take GOP extortion anymore.

For a year, Republicans leveraged their demands with blackmail.  If Democrats didn’t accept draconian and economic recovery-starving budget cuts, Republicans would shut down the government. If Democrats didn’t agree to slash the budget by exactly the amount Republicans required, the GOP would destroy the country’s credit rating.

In December, House Republicans overplayed. Initially, they’d opposed President Obama’s proposed extension of the payroll tax break that puts about $1,000 a year back into the pockets of working Americans. Just before the holidays, they changed their minds and said they’d accept a one-year extension, if it were offset by cuts in the federal budget. A dispute ensured between Democrats and Republicans about what to cut. As time ran out before the scheduled holiday break, the Senate compromised and passed a two-month extension, with the remaining 10 months to be settled later. The approval was overwhelming, 89 to 10. The Senators went home.

That bi-partisan action in the Senate left House Republicans with the choice of approving a two-month extension of a tax break they claimed to support or rejecting it, which would increase payroll taxes for 160 million workers.

For days, House Republicans refused to accept the Senate measure, threatening workers with a tax increase. The House Republicans claimed they wanted a one-year extension, but what they really wanted was a one-year extension paid for by cuts they chose without Democratic input. They demanded Senators return to Washington and vote on cuts to support a one-year deal.  Or they’d increase taxes.

The Senate refused. Obama refused. They confronted the bullies.

And the bullies blinked. The House passed the two-month extension.

Before they left town, however, the House Republican majority refused to allow the Senate to recess for more than three days. The Constitution permits each chamber to deny the other the ability to adjourn for more than 72 hours. The result is charade sessions in which a lawmaker, every three days, smacks down a gavel, declares the chamber open for business, recites the Pledge of Allegiance, then strikes the gavel again to close and leaves.

No lawmaker actually works for the people during these “sessions.” But the political dance allows a chamber to claim it’s not recessed. And that’s supposed to stave off recess appointments by the President.

In this case, Republicans intended to block recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. By New Year’s, NLRB membership had dwindled to two, denying the organization the quorum that this group, whose function is to protect workers’ rights, must have to make decisions.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, by law, could not fulfill all of its duties to protect borrowers from fraudulent lending practices until it had a director. Using blackmail again, Republicans said they would filibuster the appointment of any proposed director, no matter how qualified, until they got what they wanted – which was measures to weaken the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, legislation designed to prevent another Wall Street collapse.

Republicans created what appeared to be a foolproof scam to cripple implementation of the law. The legislation wouldn’t be fully effective without a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director and Republicans refused to approve a director unless Democrats agreed to dilute the law. In addition, the GOP would block recess appointments by never officially recessing.

Obama rebuffed this abuse. He called a legislative session that opens for three minutes every 72 hours while 99 Senators are vacationing what it is – recessed. And he made the appointments. He explained:

“When Congress refuses to act and, as a result, hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them. I have an obligation to act on behalf of the American people. I will not stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people they were elected to serve. Not when so much is at stake. Not at this make-or-break moment for the middle class.”

Give ‘em hell, Barack!

***

Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union. Follow @USWBlogger