40 Years of SOAR

USW Retiree Organization Has Evolved Into a Legion of Activists

On March 28, 1980, Frank Lumpkin showed up at Wisconsin Steel Works on the south side of Chicago, where he’d worked for 30 years, to find that the gates were locked with no explanation. They never reopened.

What followed was a years-long fight for the pensions, pay and benefits the company owed to more than 3,200 workers. Lumpkin and his wife, Bea, organized workers, families and community residents into the “Save our Jobs Committee.” With help from USW members and other workers in the region, along with many more across the country, the group ultimately won $17.7 million in court settlements.

“We put up a big fight and the union, the USW, took us in,” said Bea Lumpkin, whose husband died in 2010. “In turn, the unemployed Wisconsin Steelworkers became the best union supporters.”

Crisis in Steel

The Lumpkins’ story was one of many similar struggles that played out across the country that helped to pave the way for the creation of Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), a group that USW leaders founded 40 years ago, during the depths of the steel industry crisis in the United States.

Likewise, the Save our Jobs Committee was a precursor to Lumpkin’s decades of activism as a SOAR member.

“Frank and I were very proud of the role we played in building solidarity,” Lumpkin said, calling their efforts a labor of love. “We were especially proud of any part we played in the founding of SOAR.”

Strengthening Ties

Prior to the creation of SOAR, USW retiree organizations were largely social in nature, bringing together seniors from similar workplaces or regions, with little connection to the larger union. The establishment of SOAR, under the direction of then-International President Lynn Williams, gave those organizations a central structure and provided retired members with an opportunity to strengthen their ties to the union, and to each other.

“In the 1980s, the steel industry and related industries were really under attack. There were massive layoffs, bankruptcies, closures,” said SOAR Vice President Doug MacPherson. “Lynn believed that if we could energize the retiree population, we could find creative ways to deal with the stress that this was causing on the industry, the workers and the retirees.”

As SOAR International President William Pienta explained, the organization also gave union leaders an avenue to communicate with retirees about their pensions and health care benefits, many of which were under attack from employers struggling in the face of increased foreign competition and outdated technology.

“These groups also became more involved in levels of activism pertaining to supporting the active members, who in return supported the concerns of the retirees,” Pienta said.

Remaining Active

That component of ongoing activism and solidarity is part of what has kept Lumpkin, now 106 years old, active in SOAR over many decades.

“The most important issue is to protect and expand the right to organize,” said Lumpkin, who began her career as a union organizer when she was still a teenager and since then has participated in numerous efforts to protect women’s rights, civil rights, Social Security and Medicare, among other issues.

Those fights have become part of SOAR’s mission as the group’s purpose has expanded, Pienta said.

“In the past 40 years SOAR has undergone significant changes,” he said. “SOAR members and active members have become more dependent on each other over the years.”

SOAR members must support the struggles of active members, because better pay and benefits mean that workers put less of a strain on the social programs retirees rely on, Pienta said. In turn, active members must advocate for programs like Social Security and Medicare to ensure they remain viable for future generations.

“That makes it easy for us to work together to make both of our lives better,” Pienta said.

Founded in 1985

It was that goal – of encouraging active and retired workers to collaborate – that inspired Williams, who served as USW leader from 1983 to 1993 and was the driving force behind the creation of SOAR.

“Lynn’s vision was that the union should be there to help people,” said former International President Leo W. Gerard. “Not just when they are at work, but when they are out of work and retired.”

Gerard, who served as USW president from 2001 to 2019, was elected to the union’s executive board as District 6 director in 1985, just a few weeks after the board voted to create SOAR.

Williams named former International President I.W. Abel, who retired in 1977, as the organization’s first president.

“A retired Steelworker is not a retired union member,” Williams told SOAR members in 1987. “You will always be a part of our union family.”

MacPherson, who became a member of Local 5528 in 1968 when he went to work as a pipefitter at Stelco in Hamilton, Ontario, remembered SOAR in its earliest days being focused on preserving retirement benefits and health care for retirees.

“It was very clear from early on that this was to be its mandate, and I think SOAR did that quite successfully in a variety of ways,” MacPherson said.

In addition to battles like those Lumpkin and her allies waged, SOAR members built political alliances to gain government aid and advocated for the creation of voluntary employee beneficiary associations, or VEBAs, tax-exempt trust funds designed to pay out retirement and medical benefits to workers.

With the support of active workers and SOAR members, Williams and his successors, George Becker and Gerard, were successful in negotiating with employers to establish VEBAs, some of which continue to protect health and retirement benefits decades later.

Evolving Mission

The USW emerged from the steel crisis of the 1980s with a new focus on confronting unfair trade and a determination to push employers to invest in and modernize their facilities. The union also began to diversify and rebuild its membership through strategic mergers and organizing in new industries.

These changes not only made the USW a stronger, more diverse union, but also helped spur an evolution in SOAR’s mission, Pienta said.

“Many of our active members today work in health care, and the largest consumer of their services are seniors,” Pienta said. “Showing this relationship is an easy way to get both groups supporting an issue like minimum staffing at health care facilities.”

Finding more and more common ground among active and retired workers led SOAR members to expand the organization’s focus to include more political activism, he said.

Lobbying for legislation aimed at strengthening unions, protecting workers’ rights, fighting back against unfair trade, and pushing to bolster health care and retirement security, are a few of the ways SOAR members have been politically active, MacPherson said.

“It’s been a shift to a more global perspective, but it’s one that we’ve embraced,” he said. “As the world changed, we tried to change with it, and I think we’re doing a fairly successful job of it.”

SOAR members also were instrumental in fighting for passage of the Butch Lewis Act, which President Joe Biden signed as part of the American Rescue Plan in 2021 and which saved the pensions of 1.2 million retirees, including more than 100,000 USW members.

Meanwhile, as the organization’s membership has grown more active, SOAR’s profile has risen within the larger union. Members regularly participate in Rapid Response, Women of Steel, Veterans of Steel and other USW programs aimed at improving the lives of both active and retired workers.

For SOAR Secretary-Treasurer Denise Edwards, the willingness of SOAR members to collaborate with workers and retirees across the labor movement, and to share their wealth of knowledge, gives her hope for the next generation.

“The future for SOAR,” she said, “is going to depend on our willingness to deliver and defend our standard of living.”

Lumpkin said she hoped more of her fellow retirees would remain involved in the labor movement after they leave the workforce, explaining that it helps them and also helps the movement.

“It’s good for your health,” she said. “And organized labor needs you.”