New bill would extend benefits to laid-off steel workers

New legislation announced Thursday would extend unemployment insurance benefits for steel workers laid off from U.S. Steel’s Granite City Works.

United Steelworkers Local 1899 members crowded into an upper room at their union hall in Granite City as state Reps. Jay Hoffman, of Belleville, and Dan Beiser, of Alton, both Democrats, explained House Bill 6594.

Unemployed workers currently receive 26 weeks of unemployment insurance but the proposed legislation would extend that to 52 weeks for workers whose jobs were lost due to the idling of steel plants.

The works in Granite City idled late last year and workers were laid off in phases beginning shortly after the holidays. All told, about 2,000 people lost their jobs.

That means that this summer, some of those workers’ 26 weeks of unemployment insurance already have expired. Still more employees will see their benefits run out in the coming weeks.

“The goal here is to get everyone back to work,” Hoffman told the workers. But he admitted that’s not likely to happen soon, so an extension of benefits would help the workers in the meantime.

One problem facing workers is the calendar. State lawmakers aren’t scheduled to convene again until after the November election. By then, pretty much everyone’s benefits will have expired. There’s no chance of a meeting any sooner unless either Gov. Bruce Rauner or the General Assembly’s legislative leaders call an emergency session.

Hoffman said workers are welcome to pressure Rauner to call such a session. He also said he would consider drafting a letter to House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton imploring them to call an emergency session. The leaders, both Chicago Democrats, would need to agree on an emergency session before one is scheduled.

If the bill is passed and signed into law, Hoffman said he would work to make the benefits retroactive in order to deal with the gap in time between when the workers’ 26 weeks ran out and when the benefits would kick back in.

Beiser told the workers he and Hoffman would make passage of the bill their top priority because fault for the layoffs lies neither with the workers nor U.S. Steel. Instead, they are blamed on illegal dumping of foreign steel into the U.S. markets.

Beiser’s message to any lawmakers who would vote against workers who lost their job through no fault of their own: “To hell with them. We’re not going to let this thing go.”

This story was originally published July 21, 2016 at 11:55 AM with the headline "New bill would extend benefits to laid-off steel workers."