MARTINS FERRY — After being closed for nine months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Steelworkers Active Retirees union hall at 705 Main St. in Martins Ferry will reopen next month.

Vice President Johnny Waugh said meetings will again begin at 10 a.m. April 6. He looks forward to it as another sign of recovery from the pandemic.

“Our meetings are the first Wednesday of every month,” President Frank Papini said. “We meet at the union hall. … We’ve been closed since last September. The international closed our union halls down because of the COVID. Now they’ve opened them up. We’re glad to be back in business, and we want everybody to know.”

“We have been shut down,” Waugh said. “We’ve only opened up two months in the last two years.”

“They would close, then they would open, then they would close,” Papini said. “They finally just closed it down ’til now.”

They reflected on the obstacles to conducting business during the pandemic.

“It’s been kind of hard, because we do a lot of stuff for the retirees. We talk about insurance and we talk about pensions,” Papini said. “It’s hard to do it over the phone, especially when people have papers and they want to come meet with you. It’s difficult. … You have to see them, which I don’t mind.”

“We’re trying to get an insurance agent to come back and answer any insurance questions that we can’t,” Waugh said.

“We do our best. The trouble is everything’s not in person,” Papini said. “This way, it’s a lot easier when we have the meeting and they can bring the problem to us.”

“We had to go to them to answer their questions and get answers for them,” Waugh said.

“Our chapter covers the Yorkville, Beech Bottom and Martins Ferry retirees, so there’s a lot,” Papini said. “We average about maybe 35 or 40 per meeting. It varies. It depends on who has a problem and who doesn’t. If you have a problem with your insurance, you come to our meeting. … It’s quite an impact on quite a few people from the plants.”

They said continuing operations during the height of the pandemic called for adjustments and adaptation.

“It was hard because the international in Pittsburgh, their offices were closed so I had to set us up with a Zoom account and I did a lot of stuff over the internet as far as question-answering and meeting with our … officials, the higher-ups,” Papini said. “It changed from hands-on to online. That was a big change.”

Waugh said the issues retirees are facing are largely unchanged by COVID.

“We had been been affected by COVID, but with the insurance we had and the directions we’ve been giving and we give to them, we haven’t had too many problems,” Papini said.

Papini said he maintains a Facebook page for the union to provide news and information.

“We try to keep them pretty well informed,” Papini said of the retirees.