Audio LTV's workforce is back at work (story audio) Photos Michelle Ufford Bill Skradski More from MPR Mine closing rocks the Iron Range (05/24/2000) Mainstreet Special: The Closing of LTV Steel (3/13/01) A bad year for mining (12/27/01) Resources Northeast Minnesota Office of Job Training Your Voice Join the conversation with other MPR listeners in the News Forum.

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LTV's workforce is back at work
by Bob Kelleher, Minnesota Public Radio
January 6, 2004

Workforce Center supervisor Michelle Ufford says about 800 displaced workers are again working, and most of them have jobs on the Iron Range. (MPR Photo/Bob Kelleher)

LTV Steel closed its Hoyt Lakes taconite mine and pellet plant three years ago, and 1,400 employees lost their jobs. Iron Rangers feared a new exodus that might turn their small communities into ghost towns. But that hasn't happened. A new report finds most of the workers are still in northeast Minnesota, and most have jobs.

Virginia, Minn. — The report was compiled by staff of the Northeast Minnesota Office of Job Training in Virginia, known as the Workforce Center. The report combines information from several sources, to follow up on the workers laid off in January, 2001.

Workforce Center supervisor Michelle Ufford says about 800 displaced workers are again working, most of them in jobs on the Iron Range. That's out of a pool of almost 1,100 who sought new jobs or retraining. Most of the rest retired.

	Bill Skradski

"Most people expected when LTV shut down that there would be a mass exodus from the area. Schools would shut down. All the houses would be for sale," says Ufford. "Amazingly, 88 percent of folks who found employment are still up here in northeast Minnesota."

That's not to say they have comparable jobs. Iron mining jobs have some of the best wages and benefits on the Range. Ufford says the average wage for replacement jobs is lower, but still isn't bad.

"The average wage of people, total, in all wage ranges and in all groups, is about $15.27 per hour," Ufford says. "It's a nice average wage. I mean truthfully, considering a lot of people did take less."

For some, re-employment took a long time. Most of the miners were older, in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. Few were willing to leave the Iron Range.

"People were willing to take far lower wages to stay in the area," Ufford says. "As time marched on, the percentage of people that accepted jobs, at say eleven bucks an hour or less, increased a lot. They were unable to find anything higher. They wanted to stay, so they took whatever they could get."

No single industry absorbed the workers. Seventeen percent were able to get jobs with other iron mines. At least 30 are known to be self-employed in small businesses like consulting.

When LTV Corp. dissolved, its retirees lost benefits like lifelong access to health insurance. Ufford thinks some workers have taken jobs just for the benefits.

When I go around ... trying to find somebody to have coffee with, you can't find anybody. So, it looks like, at least in our little town, most everybody that wants to work seems to be working. - Matt Crep of Hoyt Lakes, former LTV employee

"I think that's a major deciding factor when people are looking for work. A lot of the people that are taking those lower wage jobs take them because they get benefits," Ufford says. "I wish that we could have some harder core numbers on that, but that's not something that we track."

Workforce Center officials credit an aggressive retraining and re-employment effort by government and private organizations. On average, those who completed retraining make more than those who didn't.

But most of the credit goes to the workers themselves, according to career counselor Bill Skradski.

"The success of a program, or the success of a particular project like this is -- we can all sit back and pat ourselves on the back for the services that we provide," says Skradski. "But, the individuals themselves are the instruments, you know. They went out and did what they needed to do."

Matt Crep is a former industrial electrician at LTV who is now working temporary jobs in the Twin Cities. When he's between jobs and comes home to the Iron Range, Crep is finding fewer former workers with spare time.

"I'm from Hoyt Lakes, and when I go around, now when I'm off, trying to find somebody to have coffee with, you can't find anybody," says Crep. "So, it looks like, at least in our little town, most everybody that wants to work, seems to be working."

The Workforce Center's Michelle Ufford says LTV provided a good study for what works and what doesn't. Some of the Hoyt Lakes strategies have already been used again in Grand Rapids, where the local paper plant downsized.

"We don't often get such a large sample size of dislocated workers that we can look at, in hindsight, and say, 'Here's the training. What was effective? What wasn't? What fields pay the best? What really don't? Where did people struggle? where did they not?'" says Ufford.

It may be good news to the Iron Range. But there are still a couple of hundred displaced workers without full time employment. For them, perhaps the best news would be a good paying job.

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