Iron Range communities make case for extended jobless benefits

The future of northern Minnesota hangs in the balance as the region is battered by layoffs. That was the message from union leaders, business owners and elected officials to legislators as they made the case for extended unemployment benefits.

“Every citizen in our region is touched by this crisis,” said Andrea Zupancich, mayor of Babbitt, a community of 1,600. “We’ve weathered these times before, but this time it feels different.”

For more than a century, iron ore, followed by taconite – a refined form of the ore – has been the core industry on Minnesota’s Iron Range, which extends from Grand Rapids in the west to Babbitt and Hoyt Lakes in the east. The region has endured many economic cycles, but its current problems are due to unfair international trade, several speakers said.

“There are some people outside this country who want to destroy our industry with the hopes of taking it over, period,” said John Rebrovich of United Steelworkers District 11.

The Legislative Working Group on Iron Range Unemployment, a joint body of the Minnesota House and Senate, held its first meeting Thursday to discuss solutions to the challenges facing the Iron Range. Testimony centered on proposed legislation that would provide an additional 26 weeks of unemployment compensation benefits to workers who have lost their jobs in the mines – and at companies that provide materials and services to the mines.

Governor Mark Dayton and Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, are seeking a special session of the Legislature to pass the unemployment legislation, but they have not reached agreement with the Republican-controlled House.

Those who testified at Thursday’s hearing appealed to lawmakers to act.

“When it starts with the mines, it goes down to the construction workers and the contractors,” said Rick Cannata, mayor of Hibbing and vice president of the Iron Range Building Trades. “This affects everybody up there.”

More than 2,000 workers directly employed by taconite mines have been laid off and hundreds more have lost their jobs in related industries, officials of the state Department of Employment and Economic Development and the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board testified.

“We were the first mining company to be affected by this downturn,” said Dan Pierce, vice president of USW Local 2660, whose 360 members are employed at Keewatin Taconite.

“We currently have 185 members that have already used up the first six months of their benefits, with no return to work in sight.”

Dave Lislegard,  project manager at Lakehead Constructors, Inc., and a city council member in Aurora, described how his community has been decimated, losing its dentist, drugstore, grocery store and local office of Minnesota Power, the public utility, in recent months.

“Our company, along with other suppliers and vendors, are starting to see the snowball effect” of cutbacks in mining, he said.

Current international free trade deals have allowed other countries, particularly China, to dump steel on the U.S. market below cost, several speakers noted.

When U.S. companies and unions seek redress from the World Trade Organization, “the market is destroyed by the time we get a hearing” and the damage is done, said Rebrovich.

Iron Rangers have some hope that the federal government and international trade bodies will start to address this unfair trade. In the meantime, they said, the state must help communities survive.

“We’re buying time, is what we’re doing,” said Senator David Tomassoni, DFL-Chisholm. “We don’t want to have a whole generation of people leaving the Range again.”

View video of the hearing on the Legislature’s website.