ASHLAND, Ky. — Most of the laid-off steelworkers mingling in an eastern Kentucky union hall after filing unemployment paperwork had one question for chapter president Mike Howard.

“Heard anything?”

“Same old, same old,” Howard replied.

It was a typical Monday morning in the Ashland, Kentucky union hall. Laid-off workers trickled in, signed their names to supplemental unemployment applications and sipped coffee. Patience has worn thin for most of the 633 workers laid off over the past 12 months after the Ohio-based AK Steel Corporation idled the Ashland Works blast furnace.

“Nobody knows what to do,” Mark Groves, treasurer of the local union, said. “Should I give it up and start my life all over again somewhere else, and risk them calling me back in six months?”

Groves, 56, said the workers who have invested a majority of their working life in the Ashland mill are hesitant to flee the region before reaching major career milestones that boost their pensions.

Howard, who assumed presidency over the Local 1865 union this summer, said the one-year mark since layoffs began also carries a heavy weight. By January, 104 workers will join hundreds more who lost their health insurance, and about 400 more will lose their sub-pay.

“If we just had an answer, we’d have some idea of what to do,” steelworker Jimmy Paul said. “If they’re not opening back up, it would give us the option to take a severance package. I could get into my 401K and a have a little money, or say, OK, now I’m going to leave and find a new job.”

Nationwide, thousands of steelworkers have faced layoffs in recent years as technology and other operational factors have affected steel production in states like Ohio and Indiana. In Kentucky, steelworkers and their families directly affected by the layoffs have been forced to downsize and economize as they wait for better days.

Glen Hall worked in the warehouse, where he shipped semi-finished slabs to AK Steel operations in Middletown, Ohio. He’d worked at the AK Steel coke plant since 2003 before it was shuttered and he transferred to the mill. “I’ve been through this twice now,” he said.

Rita Thomas, a mill clerk, and her husband, Corey Thomas, a blast furnace operator, also aren’t unaccustomed to layoff status. They’d worked at the mill through temporary layoffs for 14 and 15 years, respectively, before the announcement last year.

Corey Thomas had been laid off by three metal-related companies since he returned from the military and hired on with the mill.

“I’ve bounced from place to place around here since I got out of the service in 1998 … now we’ll likely have to leave,” he said.

“It feels like the whole area’s dying,” Rita Thomas said.

In a private meeting with the union heads and local elected officials during a routine corporate tour of the Ashland mill — which currently employs 198 workers — on Thursday, AK Steel Corporation CEO Roger Newport said economic conditions have not improved to the point where the company can make a firm decision on the future of the plant.

In its third quarter report, Newport said the company continues “to see benefits from our decision to focus on higher-value products, optimize our footprint and reduce our exposure to commodity products.”

AK Steel has shifted its focus toward producing higher-value steel to become more competitive in the global market.

That decision has led to fewer sales, with a reported $4.46 billion in sales for the first nine months of 2016, compared to sales of $5.15 billion in the same period a year ago, according to the company.

But the third quarter findings showed improvements compared to this time last year. The report noted the company’s earnings before interest tax, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, were 31 percent higher than in the third quarter of 2015.

Newport said the rising cost of raw materials from foreign companies, specifically India, continues to be a detriment to AK Steel when it’s already trying to combat foreign steel dumping, according to officials at the meeting.

Newport said the corporation is still “not giving up on Ashland,” Howard said. The union president noted that the corporation is pouring money into keeping the blast furnace in idle state, though the situation remains troubling because there’s “no end in sight.”

Adkins writes for the Ashland, Kentucky Daily Independent.