Butler AK Steel retirees to keep getting benefits

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

About 3,000 retired workers from an AK Steel Corp. plant in western Pennsylvania or their spouses will continue to receive medical benefits under a $178.6 million settlement approved by a federal judge in Ohio.

Retirees from the Butler Works before 2006 sued last year in response to the Ohio-based steelmaker’s plan to cut some benefits and charge premiums for others in recent years. The workers’ suit contended that violated collective bargaining agreements that promised them company-funded medical benefits during retirement.

The settlement includes $87.6 million AK Steel will spend on benefits through 2014 and $91 million to establish a trust fund that will pay the benefits thereafter, freeing the steelmaker of legacy costs.

The settlement piggybacks on case law established in a 2006 lawsuit that settled in 2008 between AK Steel and about 4,900 retirees from its flagship plant in Middletown, Ohio, near Cincinnati. That settlement established a $663 million trust fund, managed by retirees that will continue to pay for their benefits until they die, on which the Butler Works settlement was modeled.

Plaintiffs’ attorney, Greg Coleman, of Knoxville, Tenn., said the Pennsylvania settlement was smaller because it involves fewer people receiving lesser benefits.

AK Steel had agreed to the Butler Works settlement last fall.U.S. District Judge Timothy Black signed off on it Monday.