Sparrows Point

Laid-off Sparrows Point workers and retirees from the steel mill should soon be able to sign up for health insurance through a plan set up in another steelmaking region. Mill owner RG Steel - which stopped benefits Aug. 31 - asked for court approval Thursday to allow the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation Retiree Benefits Plan to accept workers and retirees from Sparrows Point and its other facilities. The United Steelworkers union agreed to expand eligibility in the plan, and RG Steel said it doesn't think court approval is necessary, though it asked for it just in case.

With the Orioles and Yankees in a fabulous and totally unexpected race in the American League East, and with those teams playing the first of four games Thursday night in Baltimore, many in both Birdland and New York will have their minds on baseball and not President Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention. But it won't simply be the grand distraction of a pennant race that pulls viewers away from their television sets — or at least away from full engagement in the Obama infomercial in Charlotte.

More than 700 people turned out for workshops Tuesday connecting laid-off Sparrows Point workers with information about health insurance, training and other aid. An even larger number is expected at additional sessions scheduled for 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, both at the training center on the steel mill complex. Similar events in June drew much smaller crowds - employees were optimistic then that the idled Sparrows Point would be sold to a steelmaker and reopened.

Forrest Martin is looking at the same help-wanted listings as all the other Sparrows Point workers, the jobs with wages of $10 an hour, $13, $15. The jobs that could mean a pay cut of half — or more — from his steel mill days. But Martin, 31, isn't exactly in the same boat as everybody else. Half of the mill's workers started at Sparrows Point before he was born. Hundreds of its laid-off workers are eligible, if not able, to retire. Martin is part of a smaller group — about 280 of the 1,700 hourly employees — who are in their 20s or 30s and have most of their working lives ahead of them.

Baltimore County will hold sessions next week for Sparrows Point workers and others affected by the steel mill owner's bankruptcy. The workshops will offer resources for the laid-off workers, particularly information about federal aid for retraining and other benefits available to them through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program. State and local agencies will have staff on hand to answer questions. The sessions will run from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sept. 4 and 6 at the training conference center just inside the Sparrows Point complex.

A settlement agreement ending health benefits for Sparrows Point workers Aug. 31 was approved Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. The agreement, struck by mill owner RG Steel and the United Steelworkers union last week, also retroactively ended supplemental unemployment pay as of Aug. 10. Judge Kevin J. Carey, who is overseeing RG Steel's bankruptcy case, wrote in Thursday's court order that the deal appeared to be "in the best...

About 1,500 Sparrows Point workers overflowed a union hall Monday with urgent questions about the future of the recently sold steel mill - questions that mostly don't have answers yet. The Baltimore County complex's $72.5 million sale to a redevelopment firm working with a liquidation company was approved by a federal bankruptcy judge last week. Benefits for the mill's roughly 2,000 employees are about to end. The meeting came shortly after RG Steel, saying payment obligations under union contracts "are simply too much … to bear," disclosed in court papers that it had come to an agreement with the United Steelworkers of America on an end date.

Elmer Hall grew up in a small town with tree-lined streets, stores, churches and schools - and the largest steel mill in the world, which ran it all. Now that company town exists only in photographs and memories. Forty years ago, the then-owner of the Sparrows Point complex in Baltimore County began demolishing bungalows, rowhouses and everything else to make way for a massive blast furnace that still stands today. On Saturday, Hall and hundreds of other former residents gathered near the mill to see each other again - and to remember when work and life were intimately intertwined.

Sparrows Point workers age 60 and older have until the end of today to retire if they want a $10,000 bonus. Joe Rosel, president of United Steelworkers Local 9477 in Sparrows Point, said many workers were coming in today to sign up after hearing of the tight deadline set by bankrupt owner RG Steel. The steel mill's largely laid-off workers must be eligible to retire and at least 60 to take advantage of the bonus. Rosel said the company's human resources staffers are handling applicants.

- A federal bankruptcy judge approved Wednesday night the sale of the Sparrows Point steel mill for $72.5 million to a redevelopment firm working with a liquidation company, but the buyers said the plant might not be dismantled. Hilco Trading, an Illinois liquidator purchasing the property with St. Louis-based Environmental Liability Transfer, told the judge that it would market the mill to potential operators - exactly what the steelworkers' union vowed to do itself in an effort to save Sparrows Point and its 2,000 jobs.