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This Newstip edited by Curtis Black
Contact:
312-369-7783
| fax 312-369-6404
| curtis@newstips.org
Steelworkers Called Back -- To Dismantle Plant
Newstip Date: 09-20-2009
"We're being forced to tear apart our own plant," said Joe Pakula, an activist with United Steelworkers Local 7367 in western Illinois.
For ten weeks, individual steelworkers and community supporters in Hennepin, Illinois, have held an informational picket line outside the steel plant there, where nearly 300 workers were laid off in February and March. They sought to pressure international steel giant ArcelorMittal to consider offers from domestic steelmakers to buy the plant and keep it open -- and they sought to keep the plant intact in the meantime.
But at 7 a.m. on Monday, 31 laid-off union members will begin a two-to-three month stint dismantling and removing equipment and preparing the facility for winter.
After a June recall, the union negotiated so members could turn down the work without risking seniority or benefits including supplemental unemployment, severance, retirement and health insurance. About seven or eight of the workers who are going back are within days or weeks of qualifying for pensions or retirement healthcare, Pakula said.
"It's better to have our guys in there with wrenches than an outside contractor with cutting torches," he said. "We can control it this way to a certain extent." But, he said, "people aren't happy."
The equipment the company has said it wants to remove isn't critical to the plant's value, Pakula said. Workers believe the company eventually wants to send the plant's tandem mill and temper mill -- powerful, state-of-the-art equipment which is critical to the plant's high productivity -- to its plants in Brazil and France.
Meanwhile a California steelmaker continues preparing a bid on the plant, Pakula said. Russ Kingston of North American Trading Co. would add a new product line and export specialized steel to China, he said.
According to Kingston, ArcelorMittal has rejected his previous offers without making counteroffers. That shows the company doesn't want to sell, the union has said.
"This company’s only aim is to destroy this cost effective and profitable plant. They look to damage the entire Illinois Valley area and the people and businesses that operate there. They look to move equipment out of country to their other facilities, only to import the same material [previously made here] back to the United States," said Local 7367 in a statement issued June 12.
With worldwide holdings, ArcelorMittal wants to shift production to low-wage countries including China and to destroy steelmaking capacity here, Pakula said. Restrictions on importing steel to the U.S. are eased when domestic steelmaking is operating at full capacity.
Newstips reported in June that the Hennepin plant has received state economic development subsidies pegged to promises to create hundreds of jobs.
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