Lockout Puts Steel Community On Edge (AK Steel, Ohio)

[theHandpuppet]

From today's Cincinnati Enquirer: http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060302/BIZ01/603020313

Lockout puts steel community on edge
BY JANICE MORSE | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Their faces spoke more loudly than their voices as businesspeople, residents and steel-plant workers contemplated the impact of a lockout of 2,700 workers that began at midnight Tuesday at AK Steel's huge plant.

"Most people, I'd say, are apprehensive," said Edna Adams, 68, a clerk at Milton's Donuts, which for more than 30 years has operated within a mile of AK's main gate. "If it doesn't get resolved quickly, it's going to hurt a lot of mom-and-pop businesses like this one - and our town already has big problems with unemployment and vacant buildings."

The 105-year-old steel plant - known commonly as just "the mill" - is an icon here. Jobs, products, money, emotions and even the community's identity are tethered to it.

The six-year contract between the company and the Armco Employees Independent Federation expired without agreement on a new contract. Both sides said Wednesday that they hope to meet again - perhaps as early as today - after union officials have considered the company's latest proposal....

MORE

(Note from onsite info: AK Steel is one of only three remaining integrated steel makers in the United States.)

[AX10]

1. Sorry to hear this.

[phaseolus]

2. note on definition

"Integrated Steel Maker" means that iron ore, coal, and limestone go in one end; finished products (flat-rolled products in plates or coils, bars, shapes, rails, I-Beams, whatever) leave the plant at the other end.

I did my engineering school co-op at an integrated mill, Jones & Laughlin Steel in East Chicago, Indiana. (It changed its name to LTV Steel after I left, it went bankrupt & liquidated, and some of the assets were purchased by & are now operated by ISG.) We had our own power plant, railroad, coke ovens, blast furnaces, basic oxygen steelmaking furnaces, slab mill, continuous slab caster, hot rolled strip mill, cold rolled strip mill, galvanizing lines, tin coating lines, and seamless tube mill. Our end users ranged from oil exploration (the seamless tubes,) automotive, appliance, food cans, bottle caps, household goods ... and lots more that I can't remember. We had hundreds of products.

Integrated mills made sense in a world where there wasn't much competition from elsewhere in the world. Now it's difficult to run them at a profit. Minimills, which produce only one thing, are more profitable and more commonly found these days.

[Red1]

3. Ah, I remember it well----

(Note from onsite info: AK Steel is one of only three remaining integrated steel makers in the United States.)

Raygun Ronny and his purge of the American steel industry.

[Broke In Jersey]

4. yep- that & other countries 'dumping' their steel here is the other reason

[loudsue]

5. And lower quality steel, at that.

In case nobody has noticed, those things that were previously made in America were of a much better QUALITY than the things we have available on store shelves these days.

Remember when Americans could be PROUD of our clothes, our appliances, our steel, our wood?

Now, our best logs are EXPORTED to other countries, from fallen American trees.

Our clothes look like yard sale rejects, and the great fabrics we formerly were accustomed to are no longer made here. Our appliances only last a year before things start going wrong.

American ingenuity has been exported, and education that fueled that ingenuity has "vouchered" itself out of business, and has been replaced by meaningless "testing" that takes all the brains out of schools....except for the wealthiest members of our society.

Life in republican america. It's a sad state of affairs.

:kick::kick::kick:

[saigon68]

7. At least those Tramps won't get abortions anymore

And those gay guys can quit kissing--- the deviants

And God and Jayseus will reign supreme in our classrooms </sarcasm>

[JesterCS]

6. I can see

AK Steel from my house. my cousin works there.. or did till he went on strike. Its a big damn place. the entire city of middletown depends on that steel mill. i think they emply somewhere around 2700 people. And its running around the clock

[madrchsod]

8. most of my in- laws and i worked at

northwestern steel and wire in sterling illinois. it was the largest arc melt furnace facility in the usa then it closed several years ago,luckly it was later purchased at has resumed production of wire coils. the nail,specialty wire and wire cloth,12-24 inch H beam and angle production was closed taking thousands of jobs with it.
i love the idea that temps can run an intergrated mill..it took me a year to understand what the hell was going on and what to watch for so i wouldn`t be killed-nothing scary than walking on top of a melt furnace realizing if you slip you are dead or hiding hoping a furnace won`t explode
when you see your cousin or his fellow steelworkers tell them that this former united states steel worker is pulling for them..

[JesterCS]

9. thanks

I wil let him know.. the downside is.. he has a pituitary disorder, and his insurance stops next weekend. he just found out about the disorder this past week =\

[bobbieinok]

10. scary info for workers and union members

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060302/BIZ01/603020317/1002

from a related story (link at bottom of OP story)

....

Since 2000, there have been:

At least three strikes/lockouts in the area, including the Comair pilot strike that lasted nearly three months in spring 2001 and the current conflicts at Cognis in Winton Place and NuTone in Madisonville.

Numerous tense contract negotiations that extended beyond strike deadlines before being settled.

Ford Motor Co.'s January announcement that it was closing its Batavia plant and cutting 1,700-plus jobs, most of them unionized.

Recent efforts by both Comair and parent company Delta Air Lines to void existing contracts with workers in bankruptcy court.

*******Meanwhile, the area's largest non-union manufacturing plant, Toyota's Georgetown, Ky., facility, turned in a record-setting year in 2005 by producing more than 500,000 cars.*******(emphasis added)

"Certainly labor in this area is feeling an awful lot of pressure from management," said J.C. Lawson III, chairman of the Comair pilots' union, who led the unit in the 2001 strike but more recently saw it agree to two rounds of concessions in less than a year. "There is a move afoot to send jobs overseas in all of business because the costs are cheaper. But I would not say that labor is dead, even if our traction is greatly reduced."

more....

[salin]

11. K & R

[doc03]

12. I work at one of the other integrated mills. AK Steel has had

among the worst labor relations and safety records in the industry for years now. One bright side to this is if it is determined a lockout the employees are entitled to unemployment. All Steelworkers hate to see these strikes, whatever concessions the union ends up settling for will eventually trickle down to every other Steel Company. This race to the bottom has been going on since the 1980's.

[anotherdrew]

13. clients of this company must be pissed. how dare they lock out the labor?

It's petty madness.