The National Museum of Industrial History hosted a talk by Dr. Jill Schennum Feb. 17, at which she spoke about her new book, “As Goes Bethlehem.” Schennum, a professor of sociology and anthropology at County College of Morris in Randolph, NJ, tackled the topic of steelworkers negotiating and adapting to the downward spiral of steelmaking in Bethlehem. Interviews with former steelworkers provide the basis for Schennum’s tracing of Bethlehem Steel’s demise and its impact on steelworkers and their families.

Schennum, who is also on the Steelworkers’ Archives board of directors, says her social agency work in the 1990s was the basis for her interest in the story behind “As Goes Bethlehem.”

“Our group homes were all over the Lehigh Valley and I was intrigued by the giant steel mill and Southside Bethlehem,” she said. “Some of my employees had husbands who were being laid off from the steel, and I am very interested in the American working class.”

In her talk, Schennum gave a glimpse of the structure of the book and what it covers. She interviewed about 120 steelworkers and concentrated on a 15-year hiring period post World War II in the 1960s and 1970s when workers expected to make a “male breadwinner wage.”

She noted the “uneven process” of the steel mill’s closing as workers and their union worked to hold onto their benefits and transferred to other Bethlehem Steel plants to protect their pensions, despite losing their plant seniority. The eventual bankruptcy of Bethlehem Steel would cost retirees their health care benefits and force the steelworkers’ pension program to be accepted under the federally chartered Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation.