BACK IN THE LABOR FIGHT
A white-haired organizer comes back to his 1980s roots — in a way
Anxious people poured into Barney Oursler’s union office in McKeesport, hundreds each week, demanding answers. This was not a short-term downturn in the steel industry. It was 1981 — Youngstown, Ohio, steel mills had collapsed, and Pittsburgh seemed to be next.
From those raw feelings of anger and injustice, Mr. Oursler — among the first to lose his job — helped bring together what became the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee. The organization punched above its weight to win an extension of unemployment benefits and other policies to help steelworkers in the early 1980s.
The memories are still fresh for Mr. Oursler — and for good reason.
Although many people may have forgotten the organization or figured it had dissolved long ago, the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee has endured — shifting to advocate for the most pressing labor issues of the day, helping the jobless file for unemployment benefits and surviving some apathy after most of its organizers left Pittsburgh for other jobs.
Mr. Oursler moved among advocacy groups and most recently spent nearly a decade as executive director of Pittsburgh United, just down the hall from where the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee’s lone staff attorney fielded calls in a tiny office.
But then the 69-year-old — who had recently stepped away from Pittsburgh United and resolved to let the next generation of organizers lead the fight — faced a plot twist.
In July, he found himself again at the organization, sitting in that committee office surrounded by piles of half-finished case files and legal documents. The phone blinked with 32 voicemail messages.
The committee’s attorney, Ed Ehrhardt, had died of a heart attack. The shock had left a community to grieve.
But it also left Mr. Oursler with a challenge: Could the nearly 40year-old organization live on?
Headed for a real disaster
The creation of the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee does not fit an easy timeline, nor is there an easy explanation for how it all coalesced into something bigger.
What was clear, as Mr. Oursler recalled, was that the original “committee” emerged as a group of several dozen laid-off steelworkers who had little clue what was happening to their industry and how to survive.
The union steelworkers had been coddled, in a way, with great wages and benefits and
protections against shortterm declines in the cyclical industry. No one thought the mills would shut down, and the local unions weren’t equipped to handle a crisis situation.
Mr. Oursler, who had spent his college years in the 1960s organizing graduate students at the State University of New York system, joined the Irvin Works — a plant now part of U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works. At that time, more women and minorities were entering the mills during a period when the civil rights movement secured more job opportunities.
When the industry headed into a tailspin, progressive activists like Mr. Oursler turned to the Great Depression for inspiration on how to respond. In the 1930s, so-called unemployed councils had organized jobless people to push for government protections.
“We realized we were heading into a real disaster,” Mr. Oursler said. “When you have a rallying cry of people who say, ‘[Expletive] this, we gotta survive,’ it attracted real energy. There were no jobs. We just started focusing on politics.”
There were several campaigns all at once, steered by an ad hoc group of people who met weekly. “Anyone could show up and vote, and it worked as long as you had creative energy,” Mr. Oursler said.
The common tactics: loud public demonstrations and media attention.
For seven months, the committee’s members showed up to sheriff’s sales at the courthouse to halt foreclosure proceedings on laid-off workers’ homes. They organized to extend utility service for people who received shutoff notices. They pressured lawmakers like U.S. Sen. John Heinz to give laid-off workers another shot at applying for federally subsidized training for other careers — a feat under the Reagan administration, which took aim at federal spending. They were involved in creating the first children’s health insurance fund, what became known as CHIP.
It attracted funding from charitable foundations and consultants that helped set up an office and an organizational structure. The committee went through periods of internal strife, as some members questioned his election as a leader.
Still, the media attention propelled the committee forward. The group’s name appeared in the chyrons of national evening news programs and magazines. The snapshots of the committee’s activism were captured in the 1985 film “Women of Steel.” The film was produced in 1981 by Steffi Domike, who was laid off from Clairton Coke Works.
Ms. Domike started a food bank at churches in McKeesport and assembled a cookbook that raised $16,000. “Cooking on Extended Benefits: The Unemployed Cookbook” had 119 pages of recipes submitted by Pittsburgh-area families — including kolbassi in whiskey, zucchini casserole, scalloped salmon and noodles, stuffed liver rolls, and apricot squares.
“We were a recognized symbol,” Mr. Oursler said. “There was always a hat and a T-shirt. For some people, it was kind of scary when there was the hat and Tshirt. For others, it gave them a sense of power and emboldened them to stand up and fight.”
The next chapter
Eventually, people had found ways through the crisis. Many joined the Pittsburgh diaspora, leaving for opportunities in other cities.
By the 1990s, Mr. Oursler and Paul Lodico, a self-described “professional rabblerouser” who had been with the committee from the early days, were among the last left. The large-scale campaigns had ended, and Mr. Oursler said much of the creative energy had been lost.
“By 2000, it became a lot harder to think of things you could do,” he said. The group’s revenue dropped from $158,000 in 2012 to $78,000 in 2016, according to tax filings. Fewer workplaces have given to the committee through United Way Contributor Choice, its primary fundraising tool.
Still, the committee remained, helping people file for unemployment benefits. Unions called when plant closures hit. The Great Recession in 2008 brought in more clients.
Around that time Mr. Oursler was chosen to lead Pittsburgh United, founded as a coalition of progressive groups. After Mr. Lodico died of cancer in 2010, the Mon Valley committee shrunk to one unemployment attorney. The committee rented an office down the hall from Pittsburgh United, on the third floor of the Letter Carriers’ Building on the North Side.
Then Mr. Oursler got a surprising application: Mr. Ehrhardt — who spent years representing companies and opposing the committee in unemployment cases — wanted to flip to the other side.
“I hated him because he was just too good,” Mr. Oursler said. “We were a little skeptical: Can this guy really retool this thing for the workers’ side? But my god, he just blossomed. He wanted to help people.”
Last year, Mr. Ehrhardt helped clients who faced frustrating delays after more than 500 workers in the state’s unemployment compensation program were laid off and three of eight call centers were shuttered.
Only after Mr. Ehrhardt’s death on July 25 did Mr. Oursler fully appreciate the scope of the attorney’s work and what it will take to continue it. Mr. Oursler, who earns about a $50,000 salary, said he is committed to keeping up with the cases.
Although the committee is focused on individual cases, Mr. Oursler has met this year with a new wave of progressive organizers mobilized by social media and by a fresh set of issues.
In groups such as Working Families Party, Democratic Socialists of America and Emerge Pennsylvania, he sees the similarities to the 1980s. Here are people who never thought they would get into politics, galvanized by their opposition to what they see as a larger system of injustices.
“They’re very different people,” Mr. Oursler said, but they have the “same commitment, same energy.”