750 workers in the process, but bain walked away with a cool $12 million profit and left the government holding the bag to pay the pension plans of $44 million. thank you for being here. nose in your opinions are stunning, but they don t tell the story of the human cost of what happened at gst, what happened to the people working there? there were 750 people who immediately had their lives turned upside down. and their entire families along with them. and the entire community in fact. it still has not recovered. when the plant closed down and they filed the bankruptcy, the people lost their health insurance, the retiree health insurance, not only to folks still working there, but we had
they turned around and paid themselves back their own investment with borrowed money and proceeded over a course of years to lever the company up with unsustainable amounts of debts so that by the end of the 1990s the company had $500 million in debt. it couldn t survive. it was an example of terrible management on the part of the business. when mitt romney is out on the campaign trail and he says it breaks his heart when he sees these unemployed people, you have a different opinion of that? i have a completely different opinion. i was the person that went down in the union hall and stood with hundreds of steel workers with steel worker retirees and spouses in their 70s and 80s. i was the one to tell them the company was this bankruptcy and their retiree health insurance, $100 million of it was gone. their pensions were being reduced. i heard stories of how kids were dropping out of college and pensioners didn t know if they
company was in bankruptcy and their retiree health insurance, $100 million of it was was gone. their pensions were being reduced. i heard stories of how kids were dropping out of college and pensioners didn t know if they could get operations or leave money to their widow. there was no one from bain around. bain walked with the cash? they underfunded pensions. they changed benefits. they made it so the company would go bankrupt. they took theirs and left you guys hanging. that s exactly right. when bain bought gst steel, they bought it for cash and obligations. among those obligations was $100 million in retirement benefits. it was owed to hundreds of gst steel workers and hundreds who retired before them. romney walked in knowing he obligated to pay that money, but when the going got tough, he walked away and took his own quick profits up front and left the steel workers behind.
1993 put very little of their own money down. borrowed the rest to buy the gs steel plant. they turned around and paid themselves back their own investment with borrowed money and proceeded over a course of years to lever the company up with unsustainable amounts of debts so that by the end of the 1990s the company had $500 million in debt. it couldn t survive. it was an example of terrible management on the part of the business. when mitt romney is out on the campaign trail and he says it breaks his heart when he sees these unemployed people, you have a different opinion of that? i have a completely different opinion. i was the person that went down in the union hall and stood with hundreds of steel workers with steel worker retirees and spouses in their 70s and 80s. i was the one to tell them the company was this bankruptcy and their retiree health insurance,
brian: big businesses breaking for obamacare taking action to cut costs already and the latest victims? retirees. gretchen: i.b.m. announcing it will remove 110 retirees off its health plan. what can these former employees expect? stuart varney joining us now. actually the employer is going to give them like a stipend to buy their own retiree health insurance? let s get straight at it here. if you work for i.b.m. right now, you get traditional health insurance health coverage. when you retire from i.b.m., you re going to get not the traditional health coverage. you re going to get a lump sum. you take that money and you spend it as you see fit within a private health care exchange. so i.b.m. is cutting its costs. it knows what its future cost is going to be because it knows what that lump sum is going to be to those employees. brian: if you re somebody retiring at 65, 67, 71, you re going to get that number, so you ve got to project how much you