Tonight the United Steelworkers (USW) posted a statement on its Facebook page criticizing a Brew article about the union’s role in the RG Steel bankruptcy case, calling the article “shamefully devoid of any context.”

Read the full text of the statement here.

Here is the context, which readers can evaluate by looking at the case file of the documents cited below:

On May 31 (the day RG filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy), Susan E. Kaufman entered an “appearance request” for herself, Richard Seltzer of New York and USW’s associate general counsel David R. Jury at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington.

An appearance request is the first thing done by an attorney in any civil case. It amounts to asking the court to enter the attorney’s appearance on behalf of the litigant. In their request, the three lawyers asked to be “added to the matrix maintained by the clerk” and provided all notices given or served in the RG case.

All entries in the RG case are listed chronologically. This request was #0025.

The next filing by the USW was made yesterday (August 21).

That request was #0950, meaning 925 documents had been entered by other parties over this period. (As we pointed out in the article, the USW sits on the Creditors’ Committee, which did file a number of motions – none of them specifically addressing or advocating for the rights, benefits, wages or employment of RG Steel workers.)

Yesterday’s motion simply asked that David Jury be admitted pro hac vice (“for the occasion”) in an 8/23 hearing that wraps up some details of the already-decided case.

If you perform a case search of “David Jury,” “United Steelworkers,” USW,” “Susan Kaufman,” etc. – you will find that the USW played no additional role over the 12 weeks since May 31, during which time 4,000 union members lost their jobs, pensions, benefits and wages – and the major RG mills have been sold to liquidating and/or property redevelopment groups.