Christmas in Bethlehem (Pa.)

by Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the December 23, 1995 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

O little town of Bethlehem How still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Allan Jennings says there is both hope and fear in Bethlehem -- Pennsylvania -- this Christmas, "hope that things won't get any worse and fear that they will."

Bethlehem, a city of 75,000 located about 100 miles north of Philadelphia together with Allentown and Easton, is -- or, at least was -- the industrial heart of the Lehigh Valley, much of it centered around the giant Bethlehem Steel facility.

Jennings, executive director of the Community Action Center of the Lehigh Valley (CACLV), said things are getting worse: There were three homeless shelters in the tri-city area in 1984 with 75 beds. "Today there are 11 shelters with 400 beds -- and they are all occupied." More than 2,600 people - - 37 percent of them children -- spent at least one night in these shelters last year. "It would have been much higher," Jennings said, "but fire put one of them out of commission for seven months."

CACLV also operates a 16-apartment family shelter in Allentown. As in the other Bethlehem, there is no room at the inn. "It's full," Jennings said, "and there are 100 families on the waiting list."

Michelle Lawson, who supervises the shelter, described the average family living there as one headed by a single parent, generally a woman in her 20s with one or two children. "In years past, most of our residents were families living on public assistance," Lawson said. "But today many have jobs that don't pay enough to afford rent even if they can find housing in the first place."

Lawson said that homelessness and unemployment are interlinked. "If you don't have a stable residence, it is almost impossible to maintain a steady job and if you don't have a steady job, you can't pay for a stable residence. It's a vicious circle," she said, made worse by the fact that the regional transit authority plans to raise one-way fares to $1.50.

Residency at the shelter is limited to 60 days. "We are 'crisis-oriented,'" Lawson said. "Our goal is to help develop 'living skills' that will make it possible for families to make it once they leave."

She said, "Sometimes it's as simple as helping them learn how to budget. And that's almost impossible if you work at a minimum wage job or are forced to live on a $316 per month grant from AFDC with $157 more in food stamps .... It doesn't leave much left over for Christmas."

Lawson pooh-poohed claims that private charities could or would take up the slack. Last year CACLV was able to provide a Thanksgiving meal for 150 families; this year it was 120. She doubts they will be able to provide a Christmas turkey and "fixin's" for more than 50 families this year, down from 70 in 1994.

Although Lawson thinks there is need to reform the welfare system, she said reform must be based on providing training and jobs for those forced to turn to public assistance. "Job training without jobs is nothing," she said. "And we need to increase the minimum wage."

More than 25,000 jobs were wiped out in the Lehigh Valley in the 1980s. Many of them were high-paying jobs at the Mack truck plant in Allentown and at Bethlehem Steel, most of which disappeared in 1982 and 83. A 1984 study by CACLV showed that one-third of wage earners in the Lehigh Valley suffered a decline in wages and Jennings thinks it "reasonable" to assume a continued decline.

Jennings said the recent layoffs at Bethlehem, where 1,700 workers were forced out on pensions, will not have the impact of earlier layoffs. "But what about the next generation?" he asked.

Bethlehem Steel traces its corporate lineage to the founding of the Saucona Iron Company in 1857. In 1860 the name was changed to Bethlehem Rolling Mill and Iron Company and again, in 1889, to Bethlehem Steel Company.

Through the years workers at the company's Bethlehem facility, which stretches for several miles along the Lehigh River, turned out the giant 48-inch H-beams that they proudly remember "built the New York skyline" and are to be found in numerous skyscrapers and bridges -- including the Woolworth Building and the George Washington Bridge in New York, the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

But all that changed when the big beam mill closed on Oct. 20, the first step in what Peter DePietro, president of the Lehigh County Labor Council, sees as the demolition of much of the plant. Since the end of November, no steel has been produced and demolition crews have moved in to tear down the blast furnaces and other landmarks in the plant.

The shutdown and its after-effects will mark the end of an era as employment in the plant temporarily stabilizes at about 2,000 -- a far cry from the 30,000 who worked at the company's flagship facility during World War II. "There were three local unions in the plant and about 15,000 workers when I went to work there 31 years ago," John Bachek, chair of Steelworkers Local 2599 grievance committee, said nostalgically.

Bethlehem, which then had facilities strung across the country from Sparrows Point in Maryland to California and Washington, made a killing during both world wars as workers produced a quarter of the armor plate for warships, a third of all forgings for naval guns and coast artillery, and built nearly one-fifth of all naval vessels constructed during World War II.

Charles Schwab, credited by many as the founder of what was to become the nation's second largest steelmaker, came to Bethlehem from Carnegie Steel where he had played a role in breaking the 1892 strike at Homestead Works near Pittsburgh.

Like Carnegie -- who ordered the superintendent at Homestead to use so much force and brutality in breaking the strike that steelworkers wouldn't even think of unions for 100 years -- Schwab was absolutely ruthless in dealing with attempts to organize a union at the company's Bethlehem plant.

Schwab broke a strike there in 1910 when he "persuaded" the governor to declare martial law and send state police to break the strike. Their brutal assault on strikers culminated in an incident where a "stater" rode his horse up to the door of a saloon and indiscriminately fired into the building, killing Joseph Szabo, a Bethlehem striker.

Although no charges were brought against the officer -- "He was only doing his duty," officials said -- public outrage forced President William Taft to order the Bureau of Labor to investigate the company's "labor practices." When the Bureau issued a scathing denunciation of the company's strikebreaking, Schwab threatened to move out of the city and presto -- support for the strike dried up. Workers returned to work under their old wages and conditions and strike leaders were blacklisted.

What might be called the Schwab doctrine of labor relations was passed down to those who followed him into management of Bethlehem. When Taft tried to intervene during the Great Steel Strike of 1919, he asked if Eugene Grace, who succeeded Schwab as Bethlehem CEO, would deal with "his men" if 99 percent of them belonged to a union. "Not as union men," Grace said.

But even Grace had to change his mind when confronted with the determination of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) and its Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC). Although some Bethlehem workers were involved in the Little Steel Strike of 1937, the Bethlehem facility was not and, for a while, it appeared that the city's mayor was right when he said, "The CIO can't win here."

In a recent interview with the Morning Call, a local newspaper, John Wadolny, one of the first SWOC organizers, told of the brutal hours, bribery and favoritism of the 1930s: "We worked six days a week, double shifts and had no vacations. Men gave foremen chickens and pigs for a chance to work."

In addition to brute force, Bethlehem used other, more sophisticated ways to derail union organizing efforts. Following the 1919 strike the company set up the Employees Representation Plan (ERP) that "represented" Bethlehem workers until the National Labor Relations Board ordered it disbanded just before World War II began in August 1939.

Bethlehem appealed and went ahead with previously-scheduled elections for ERP officers despite a warning by SWOC that a strike would ensue if voting took place. On March 24, 1940 workers walked out and, after a four-day strike, forced the company to agree to a settlement that gave equal status to the SWOC and to a National Labor Relations Board election which the SWOC won that August.

Despite the growth of new jobs during the 1980s, poverty in the Lehigh Valley region didn't decline, a phenomena Jennings finds "scary." He said, "It doesn't bode well for the next recession," adding that with the dramatic reductions in public spending "only an ostrich can view the future without worrying."

Both DePietro and Bachek say the Bethlehem plant is in a close-down mode and it's been coming for a long time. "They refused to modernize the plant and they refused to take orders," Bachek said.

DePietro agreed with those who fear that Santa Claus will pass by many homes in the Lehigh Valley this year. "For some this holiday season will be a sad one. Some of our brothers and sisters from Bethlehem Steel Corp. will be leaving their workplace for the last time during this most joyous time of the year. It seems like Big Corporate greed loves to 'pork' the working people during this time of year," he said bitterly in the council's newsletter.

Despite claims that destruction of the the Bethlehem mill is dictated by "competition" and "over-capacity," the need for steel in this country far exceeds the industry's capacity. The political task is to turn that need into a demand for a public works program to rebuild our nation's infrastructure.

Broadening the base of support for HR-1591, the Martinez Jobs Bill, is a good place to start.