A CRISIS IN BASIC STEEL

...This contract also guaranteed two years of supplemental unemployment benefits, paid out of the gneral corporation fund rather than from local plant accounts, for workers with 20 years or more seniority...

...Coupled with this measure is a promise of at least $900 million in tax breaks and investment credits for plant modernization...

...I shudder to think of what will become of Campbell and Struthers, the mill communities here...

...Treasury report and "reference pricing" as a "positive first-step development to help solve job loss...

...Last December this committee issued a report that has become the foundation of the Administration's steel policy...

...Now that Youngstown Sheet and Tube is writing off most of its Mahoning Valley operation, it will produce the bulk of its products in its more efficient Indiana Harbor works...

...All the major companies, including U.S...

...The U.S...

...Youngstown area steelworkers are extremely bitter about all this...

...There was 147 such terrible pressure to try to do something...

...The steel corporations' pleas for protection from foreign imports mask an effort to wrest lucrative tax and environmental concessions from Washington, and the Carter White House seems eager to please and avoid a confrontation that would label it "antibusiness...

...president has said nothing on this issue...

...Who's going to buy these little mill houses now...

...Kaiser and Armco Steel cut the labor force, as did Republic and National Steel...

...They make applications to the plants in Houston and Lorrain but even if they get hired there, the odds are against it, they'll go to the bottom of the job list...

...Foreign steel sold at less than that price in the U.S...

...Irony of ironies, the steelworkers' union is locked into a conciliatory position with regard to private enterprise...

...president Lloyd McBride welcomes the U.S...

...We're in a free economy...

...During the 1977 steel contract negotiations I. W. Abel, outgoing U.S.W.A...

...Inland's Indiana Harbor plant, with some 17,000 steelworkers employed in a highly integrated operation, has about the most efficient production in the industry...

...The "Partners in Progress" slogan of the "Experimental Negotiating Agreement" in basic steel, as the contract is called, generally obliges the union's International officers to support the steel executives' interpretation of reality...

...And the inability of either the government or the steelworkers themselves to mobilize an effective response to the companies' actions creates a moral crisis for us all...

...He adds "To the extent that a reference pricing system does not fully accomplish our goals of restoring lost job opportunities, we will continue to press for quota-setting orderly market agreements, and if voluntary relief cannot be obtained, we will demand congressional action establishing legislated quotas...

...Clearly, the U.S.W.A...

...I'm sure that Youngstown did not close the Youngstown plant in order to prove any kind of point...

...There is speculation in the major steel union halls that the McBride administration may encourage proposals to change the union's constitution by replacing the current system of referendum elections with a convention vote for union offices above the local level...

...Steel Corporation lists itself as "a Diversified Producer of Materials and Services," and, since 1966, has become one of the nation's leading plastics producers...

...president, pressed for "lifetime" job security for steelworkers...

...We have no way of knowing to what extent plans are being made for further layoffs and capacity reductions...

...Steel, Bethlehem Steel, Republic Steel, and National Steel, will also seek to close smaller production units and modernize existing operations...

...Steel Corporation announced it would close facilities in Youngstown and hinted it might further reduce capacity elsewhere (at least 5,000 layoffs and permanent terminations...

...The general trend, however, is for investments to be made in chemicals and other highly automated operations with few jobs for former steelworkers...

...They'd always say, "When Detroit's down, Youngstown's flat...

...So the real crisis in the steel industry is the one being experienced by the families of more than 25,000 ex-steelworkers...

...These corporations all have works in the Chicago-Gary area expanding at much faster rates than the Youngstown operations...

...For the past decade steelmakers have been scurrying to find alternative investments, as steel profits become tight...

...There is fault to find with an economic system that allows a corporation to operate in a community until it begins to lose profits, at which point it can run with almost no responsibility for the consequences...

...Of course a big part of our problem is due to unfavorable location...

...In any case, by closing the Campbell Works in Youngstown before January 1, 1978, when these pension changes would have gone into effect, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Corporation deprived hundreds of veteran steelworkers of the pensions they would otherwise have been qualified to receive under the new contract...

...If there was a market for the steel . . . I think they would much prefer to sell that steel at a price that would give them profit...

...Given its narrow mandate in the 1977 union election, one wonders why the McBride administration has so far failed to press for an effective labor voice in setting national priorities in basic steel...

...Lloyd McBride promised on "Meet The Press" one week before the 1977 election that, if elected, he would not seek a convention ballot...

...They were both towns of at least 20,000, and come this spring the panic-selling is going to be terrible...

...The U.S.W.A...

...As long as we lack the same control over investment and job reductions, we will continue to have these crises whenever one of the corporations decides that conditions allow the closing of another less productive unit...

...He chooses instead to defend "private enterprise...

...The Fall 1978 Steelworkers convention will also become an arena for debate over the union's job policies...

...In periods of slack employment, which have marked the industry in recent decades with only a few exceptions like the year 1974, alternative sources of income for retired steelworkers are limited and the effects of early retirement on plant hiring tend to be minimal...

...The answer is, how are we going to have our members make steel that can be sold in this country against unfair competition...

...The convention is dominated by at least 900 paid union officials, who generally obtain credentials from small locals that cannot afford to send an elected delegate...

...And instead . . . instead of saying that we're not going to be thrown out in the street like a bunch of dogs to starve . . . they're parroting the company line...

...In an interview with Agis Sapulkis of the New York Times (January 15, 1978), Edgar B. Speer, chairman of the Board of U.S...

...But 146 nowhere is there any suggestion that industry accountability will be ensured...

...The Youngstown Sheet and Tube Corporation announced plans to close the Campbell works outside Youngstown, Ohio (5,000 terminated...

...The President's Council on Wage and Price Stability Report of October 1977 shows that corporations with highly centralized plants far outperform those with numerous locations...

...Jobless steelworkers at the Campbell Works received only three months of supplemental benefits before the local fund was exhausted...

...Clearly, the demand for public spending on capital projects is a big part of the answer to slack demand in basic steel, but nowhere in the official union response to recent layoffs is there mention of the probable further effects of plant modernization on employment...

...For more than 30 years steelworkers in the region have witnessed the slow death of their communities...

...In response to pressure from the union and steelcommunity congressmen, the President convened a Treasury Department Task Force chaired by Undersecretary Anthony Soloman...

...District 31), and Linus Wampler (director of the ore mining district in Minnesota and Northern Michigan), called for immediate federal investigation of the industry as a first step toward public control over job reductions...

...The contract fell short of what Abel hoped to accomplish, but it did establish the "65 Rule," which guarantees a steelworker with 20 years or more service (in the same plant), and 45 years or more of age, immediate right to full pension...

...There was such desperation and anger...

...Now most of the talk is either about the possibility of opening the mills again, or about unemployment benefits and home selling...

...The corporations are given a clear sign: business as usual...

...In good times, these formulas could lead to early retirement for career steelworkers, thus providing mobility in the plants...

...will have to win major job-security concessions from the steel corporations if it is going to mend the internal strife that became so evident in the 1977 International election...

...Summer and fall of 1977 were disastrous for the nation's steelworkers: Bethlehem Steel announced cutbacks and plant closings in Lackawanna (3,500 laid off) and Johnstown, Pa...

...Many local union presidents in basic steel are calling for the 35-hour week at no loss in pay as a key demand in the 1980 contract negotiations...

...IRONIES ABOUND in the recent plant closings...

...When plant closings were announced in late 1977, such steel union "insurgents" as Ed Sadlowski, James Balanoff (director of the Chicago-Gary U.S.W.A...

...The people that own this company are not going back to shacks and eat Wheaties, they're going back to mansions and eat caviar...

...there's no law that can force a company to operate a plant against its will, and all of the anger and the frustration that was demonstrated by that steelworker is understandable but it doesn't answer anything...

...But McBride's failure to press the corporations and the federal government for immediate job-creating programs in places like Youngstown does not bode well for the steel towns or their people in the coming years of crisis...

...The companies say that "it's too bad that we have to do this to you . . . we feel terrible...

...Yet when I think of the millions these mills have made for a few families in Youngstown, and how the mills were built by people in the community who got so little from it all, I have to remember the time a few years ago when with $80 million to install a Basic Oxygen Furnace these works might have been saved...

...A union official from the Campbell works expressed the rage of the steelworkers: In the last two weeks 14,000 jobs have been eliminated at Johnstown, at Lackawanna, and here at Youngstown Sheet and Tube...

...Republic Steel cries about the imports, yet they bought slab steel from France last year . . . They have been eliminating our jobs for years, combining jobs, speeding us up, shutting plants, and they want to focus our attention . . . on the Japanese...

...Marvin Weinstock, one of the most influential steel labor leaders in the area and an insurgent candidate for vice-president in the 1977 elections of the United Steelworkers of America (U.S.W.A...

...They have decided to . . . take out of operation a multimillion-dollar operation...

...This "crisis" of political will among steelworkers' leaders may reach something of a climax in fall 1978 when more than 3,000 union delegates will meet in Atlantic City for their U.S.W.A...

...We're saying we don't care how the companies feel: we don't care if they pay it or the government pays it, we want our jobs...

...There's been no planning, no direction...

...No steel town missed the impact of layoffs and shutdowns...

...The Treasury Department has called for a system of "reference pricing," which sets the average price of steel at $330 per ton...

...How am I going to get a home and raise a family...

...I'm interested in preserving jobs...

...This may be true in some instances...

...To compound the damage, the date of Youngstown's closing also obviated this clause...

...3,500 laid off, plant modernization scrapped...

...Others seek innovations like the Guaranteed Annual Wage plans, which have been won by such automation-hit unions as the International Longshoremen's Association...

...And the only way I know that that's going to happen is to remedy the unfair competition...

...Among the world's major steel producers only the United States continues to give its steel companies such a free hand in opening and closing plants...

...McBride also promises continued advocacy of railroad rebuilding, urban mass transit programs, and further antidumping enforcement according to the 1974 Trade Act and the Trade Readjustment Assistance Program...

...q 149...

...W. A. leadership to make this change in Atlantic City, a change that would hinder the kind of popular insurgency that has brought an Ed Sadlowski and a Marvin Weinstock to the attention of steelworkers in 1977...

...A finding of dumping will result in punitive tariffs to discourage further attempts...

...You know, we are really landbased here and it's hard to compete with lakeside plants, especially the new "greenfield" operations that you have in the Gary area and in the South...

...Steel, noted that nonsteel divisions accounted for about 30 percent of the Corporation's shipments in 1976 but that these brought in more than 50 percent of the profits...

...We shall soon see what that promise was worth...

...You hear that question over and over . . . . There's no future for that skilled young guy...

...The wild rhetoric that you just heard won't save jobs...

...If they do not have nationalized steel industries as in Great Britain, the steel-producing nations at least have a centralized form of national industrial planning...

...Before the fall 1977 shutdown, the major steel producers in the Youngstown area (the Mahoning River Valley) were Youngstown Sheet and Tube, Republic Steel, and U.S...

...Steel stocks, but it is alarming for the working people of the nation's manufacturing belt...

...The Mahoning Valley share of national steel production was 13.2 percent in 1947, 10.8 percent in 1955, and 8.2 percent by 1968...

...This replaced the earlier "70-80 pension rule," which granted pension rights to steelworkers under 55 whose age and years of service added up to 80, and full benefits to steelworkers over 55 whose age and years of service equal 70...

...Not the barest hint of how future layoffs can be prevented, or at least fully compensated, even though most analysts agree that plant modernization will continue to eliminate steelworkers' jobs, and especially in regions like the Northeast that are already suffering from massive cuts in their labor force...

...In the January 1978 edition of the union paper, Steel Labor, U.S.W.A...

...By 1970 more than 50 percent of manufacturing employment in the area was in primary metals, as opposed to about 40 percent in the Pittsburgh area, and 6.2 percent nationally...

...Thus, from a parliamentary viewpoint, it would be relatively easy for the U.S...

...Part of the answer may be found in a TV confrontation between Youngstown steelworkers and McBride in October 1977 when plant shutdowns were being announced...

...The U.S...

...Thus, in the first half of 148 1976, well before the latest round of plant closings, Youngstown Sheet and Tube reported an after-tax profit of 1.8 percent on sales, as opposed to Inland Steel's record 9.5 percent...

...The young worker is getting the worst deal...

...biannial convention...

...sums up the situation: It's been going down like this for many years...

...There was simply no money put into any plant modernization...

...Youngstown Sheet and Tube . . . cry about imports, yet they buy roll-making equipment from Japan...

...This call was not taken up by the union's International office...

...Marvin Weinstock says: You can't imagine what it was like in the first weeks after the company announced the closings...

...Noting that this speaker supported his opponent in the February 1977 union election, a fact that was obvious since the union official wore a "Sadlowski" sticker on his hard hat, McBride countered: . . . it's the kind of rhetoric that really on close analysis makes no sense...

...Lloyd McBride goes around and says it's too bad, it's a cry of despair...

...This may be reassuring for the holders of U.S...

...Construction of the General Motors Lordstown plant and the location of smaller automotive plants in the valley maintain the demand for steel products through the 1960s, but in general the number of Youngstown steel fabrication outlets has been decreasing steadily since the 1940s...

...will trigger a Treasury investigation to determine if the steel is being "dumped" at a price less than the cost of production abroad...

...Steel...

...As long as . . . the demand was fairly high, we could go fairly well, but in slack times this area was always hardest hit...

...The steel executives will counter by claiming that diversification and modernization produces jobs in the long run, if not in basic steel than in other industries...

...In other words, the decline of basic steel production in the Youngstown area was further aggravated by its dependence on employment in basic steel rather than on secondary manufacturing...

...Alan Wood Steel in Conshohken, Pa., just West of Philadelphia, closed forever (3,000 terminated...

...IN ORDER TO MEET competition head-on, the American steel industry is attempting to close as many of its less efficient plants as it can...

...It should be a battle cry, it should be a battle cry of all steelworkers that we're going to stand up and fight for our jobs, that we're not going to go back and starve...

...In view of all this one might expect McBride at least to call for some quid pro quo from industry in return for the investment credits that may otherwise lead to additional layoffs for his members...