A family drained

It’s hard enough for thousands of healthy Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Co. retirees who lost their health and life insurance in the company’s ongoing bankruptcy reorganization. For Kevin and Sharon Cowell, it’s a disaster. Cowell, 42, has lung cancer that hasn’t responded to chemotherapy. The former Kaiser worker, a United Steelworkers of America union member, labored in the Spokane Valley for 13 years, tending the Trentwood rolling mill’s huge furnaces that melt aluminum. His cancer was diagnosed two years ago – a total surprise to Cowell, who never smoked but inhaled a variety of toxic fumes in his work near the remelt furnaces. He suspects his job caused his cancer, but he can’t prove it. In January, Cowell retired on a medical disability. In March, his cancer doctor told him he would probably live only three to six months. “I’m hoping to prove him wrong,” Cowell said with a wan smile, his voice a near whisper. “He said there was nothing more they could do, so I’ve been sent home to wait.” In May, the Cowells were told Kaiser was dropping their medical

coverage and a $35,000 life insurance policy. The retirees’ safety net was a casualty of Kaiser’s bankruptcy as the company continues to spend about $10 million more than it makes each month. It has paid out more than $100 million in health insurance claims since it filed for bankruptcy in February 2002. The company lost $788.3 million in 2003.

About 3,000 retired Steelworkers in Spokane are affected, and as many as 15,000 nationwide, said Dave Carlson, president of Steelworkers’ Local 338 at Trentwood.

Those under age 55, like Cowell, are the hardest hit. As of May 31, retirees under age 55 “are paying everything,” said Dan Sampson, a union leader at Trentwood who worked for years alongside Cowell.

Retirees age 55 to 65 may eventually get tax credits that would cover a portion of their medical insurance. However, Kaiser’s secured creditors are still wrangling in U.S. bankruptcy court about how much money should go to Kaiser’s “legacy costs” for retirees.

A once-robust man, Cowell built his family’s five-bedroom house in Mead over two years on a pine-studded lot, working long hours after his Kaiser shifts. He and his wife, Sharon, raised three children, Kira, Kaitlin and C.J., a Marine about to be sent to Okinawa who’ll be coming home on leave to visit his family next month.

Cowell cared deeply about the fate of his fellow workers during the bitter Kaiser strike and lockout from 1998 to 2000.

He stood on the picket line outside Trentwood. He traveled to Houston, Seattle, Olympia and California as a Steelworker “road warrior” to protest the direction Kaiser was taking under its top boss, the controversial Maxxam Inc. CEO Charles Hurwitz, of Houston, who owns the majority of Kaiser’s stock.

“He took all the trips. He was a leader,” Sampson said.

In Texas, Cowell waved signs in front of the Houstonian, the opulent high-rise where Hurwitz lives alongside several Saudi Arabian princes.

He attended a Kaiser shareholder meeting in May 1999 that company managers moved out of Houston to a remote country club where Texas Rangers stood guard to keep order. He met Julia Butterfly Hill, a young environmental activist who camped in a 1,000-year-old redwood owned by Maxxam subsidiary Pacific Lumber for more than two years in a colorful campaign to fight the company’s clearcutting of ancient redwoods.

Cowell said he’s deeply disillusioned by corporations like Kaiser that undercut workers as they seek to protect their bottom line. “It’s immoral to treat employees this way who’ve been loyal to you for umpteen years. Americans aren’t informed enough about these corporate abuses,” he said.

But Cowell also fought for Kaiser’s future viability, protesting at Bonneville Power Administration headquarters in Portland in 2001 against proposed electricity rate increases that threatened to cripple the Northwest’s aluminum industry. While the region’s aluminum plants were shuttered, Kaiser and other aluminum companies sold their energy contracts for hundreds of millions of dollars as electricity rates soared throughout the West.

Now, his traveling days over, the former road warrior stays home.

Cowell spends most of his days in bed and lies awake at night because of pain. His appetite is gone. The disease has stolen 100 pounds from his 6-foot, 4-inch frame. He walks with a slow shuffle.

Kaiser’s now-defunct medical plan was created decades ago, in an era when there was a social contract between management and labor. It was forged in negotiations between the Steelworkers and the company. The co-pay was $15 for office visits and $10 for prescriptions. The Cowells paid $50 a month to insure their entire family.

With that coverage gone, “we have nothing now,” said Sharon Cowell, Kevin’s wife. A substitute teacher in the Mead School District, she’s looking for a full-time teaching job with benefits, but she hasn’t found one yet.

The Cowells looked into the costs of COBRA, a federal law that allows workers to pay for their own medical coverage through Kaiser. The cost for the couple and their two dependent daughters, 15 and 18, would have been nearly $1,000 a month.

They couldn’t afford to cover the entire family. Cowell’s Kaiser pension is $530 a month. With Social Security disability benefits, the family has an income of about $2,600 a month – a bit more when Sharon Cowell is substitute teaching. This summer, the Cowells have been paying about $420 a month out of pocket for prescription drugs to dull his pain.

They’ve sent in the paperwork to Kaiser to enroll Kevin in COBRA at a cost of $345 a month. They’ve also applied to enroll their daughters in Washington state’s Basic Health Plan for low-income families.

Although it costs far more, COBRA coverage, which includes prescription drugs, “is intended to provide essentially the same level of benefits that the retiree had prior to June 1,” Kaiser spokesman Scott Lamb said.

Retirees have 60 days from June 1 to enroll in COBRA and 45 days beyond that to begin making premium payments. They can also make retroactive payments to recover some medical costs from June 1 and can enroll for life regardless of their medical condition, Lamb said.

Cowell’s work at Kaiser was hazardous.

When he first hired on in 1989, he was a dross operator who pulled hot scum off molten metal. “The dross would smoke, and it was very dusty. It was a messy job that few people wanted,” Sampson said.

Later, Cowell became a fireman who worked with Sampson in the remelt area. The job involves taking scrap aluminum, melting it and adding various alloys of zinc, chrome, magnesium and copper. The firemen also worked with chlorine, an extremely hazardous gas that was added to the alloys in a “fluxing” process that reduced impurities.

“That’s where he got gassed – through fluxing. When you have the flux tube in the metal, the gas can come back at you,” Sampson said.

Cowell said he was sent to the emergency room twice after overexposures to chlorine gas. He also worked at furnace DC4, which has PCBs in a below-ground “pit” where the aluminum alloys are cooled.

PCBs are banned industrial chemicals suspected of causing cancer. State regulators are investigating Trentwood’s PCB problems.

Furnace DC4 has been shut down since mid-2001, Lamb said. “Kaiser’s policy is to provide a safe and healthy workplace for all of its employees,” he added.

Cowell said he worked in protective “hot pants” and gloves but didn’t wear a respirator. “It was dangerous. You had to know when to run. But I enjoyed the work and the co-workers,” he said.

No Kaiser managers have come to see him, Cowell said. But his fellow Steelworkers from Local 338 visit often. They’ve launched a fund-raising effort this summer to help the family.

“In three to four days, we collected $2,000. We had guys writing checks for $100, $200. It’s part of being a union brother or sister,” Sampson said.

Thanks to the Steelworkers, “I’ll have the cash to pay for his pain pills,” Sharon Cowell said. “Kevin will have to go on oxygen next, and that’s very expensive.”

The fund raising is continuing at the Trentwood union hall.

“Anything we can do to help Kevin, we’ll do. This is just breaking our hearts,” Sampson said.