Extended Benefits Sought For Steelworkers Unemployment For Many Locked-Out Kaiser Workers Expired In Mid-August

Five Spokane women from Spouses of Steel, a support group for families of displaced Steelworkers, rallied support from legislators Tuesday to get their husbands back to work.

Lawmakers are now considering legislation that would extend unemployment benefits for Steelworkers, who’ve been out of work since they went on strike in September of 1998.

Unemployment benefits for most Steelworkers expired in mid-August, 1999.

More than 2,900 United Steelworkers have been locked out of five Kaiser Aluminum plants in three states since Jan. 14, 1999. The lockout occurred after the union offered to end the strike.

Members of the Spouses of Steel - Jeanne Jokkel, Kendra Jokkel, Tammy Baxter, Jill Peak and Ginger Yeager - said they are hopeful about a pair of identical bills, sponsored by Rep. Alex Wood and Sen. Lisa Brown, both Spokane Democrats. “We’re trying to regain what they had before,” said Jeanne Jokkel, the group’s president.

The bills would extend unemployment benefits past the usual 32-week period for union employees who are locked out of their jobs. No decision has been made regarding how long the benefits would be extended, but Wood said it would most likely add an extra 32 weeks.

“The trouble is this thing’s gone on so long,” Wood said, adding that he hopes the extended benefits will encourage union members to continue to fight to get their jobs back. Members of the group spoke Tuesday with a handful of legislators about the importance of regaining the benefits until the union and Kaiser can reach an agreement.

“We got a lot of support from the ones we didn’t expect,” Yeager said about legislators. Peak said she thinks her group carried a message to lawmakers that union members can’t effectively communicate.

“There are things that we can do from a woman’s point of view,” she said. “They (legislators) can see the family behind the man with a job.”

Next week, union members will visit Olympia to push for extending unemployment benefits.

Finding jobs since the lockout has been difficult, said Jeanne Jokkel. She said many companies fear former Kaiser employees will go back to their old jobs if a settlement is reached.

“I would rather see that plant go down than to have the union succumb,” Jokkel said. Yeager’s husband, Mike, whose unemployment benefits expire in a few weeks, is already considering retraining. They hope the bills proposed by Wood and Brown will prevent him from having to start a new career.

Wood worries about the likelihood that his bill will even make it to the House Committee on Commerce and Labor. Wood said that because Republicans have traditionally sided with business, it will be difficult to gain enough support in a split house to pass this legislation.

Though Spokane Republicans, such as Rep. Larry Crouse, R-Spokane Valley, have spoken in support of the bill, it may be a tough fight to get commerce and labor co-chair, Rep. Jim Clements, R-Selah, to put Wood’s bill on the committee’s agenda, Wood said.