LTV - War on the floor

by Rick Nagin

This article was reprinted from the April 20, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

CLEVELAND - Some 2,000 steelworkers descended on the LTV shareholders meeting here April 15 to protest company plans to build a nonunion minimill in Alabama.

They cheered as top leaders of the United Steelworkers of America delivered a strong warning that there will be an escalating "war on the floor" of LTV's plants if the company does not resolve the dispute with the union over the proposed new mill, a joint venture with the Japanese-owned Sumimoto Metals and British Steel, known as TRICO.

Coming in busloads from Illinois, Indiana and Western Pennsylvania, the workers joined fellow union members from Cleveland and surrounding areas. While half demonstrated outside One Cleveland Center, the others, each holding one share of LTV common stock, filled the building's auditorium and an overflow room.

The din of the demonstrators pounding sticks on the pavement and chanting, "Hoag must go!" could be heard in the meeting as LTV Chairman David Hoag wound up his self-congratulatory message to the stockholders and turned the floor over to company President J. Peter Kelly who was booed and heckled as he attempted to defend TRICO.

"Sit down," the workers called, as Kelly finished up his speech. "Bring on Leo," they cried, referring to Leo Gerard, the union's international secretary-treasurer, who had been given permission to address the meeting.

Gerard, after getting a standing ovation, blasted the company's record of breaking promises and violating the union's trust and for failing to mention the sacrifices in wages, jobs and benefits the union had made in the 1980s to get LTV out of bankruptcy.

"TRICO is being financed by profits that were generated by our union members and is aimed at robbing them of their futures," he charged. The plant, he said, would increase LTV's capacity 25 percent with no guarantee of an expanding market or of the company's increased market share. Gerard said 15,000 jobs have gone to build TRICO and thousands more are threatened now. "Unless you reject this course of action I promise that we will be your worst nightmare every day on the floor of these plants," he warned.

To loud cheers, Gerard introduced International Union President George Becker, who said he had also come "to let the stockholders and investors know about the betrayal and treachery of LTV's management."

Becker said he had negotiated hundreds of contracts over the past 30 years but only rarely had to deal with "such untrustworthy people. We call them renegade companies and sometimes we call them much worse. They have no loyalty to their workers, no loyalty to their investors, no loyalty to the communities where they are located."

Surrounded by boisterous demonstrators carrying black flags with red letters reading "War on the floor -- Stop TRICO," Becker told the press outside the building that if LTV does not settle, "the consequences will not be something" the stockholders will be able to live with.

Negotiations between the union and LTV over wages and other economic issues which began April 1 are stalled. Unresolved issues must go to binding arbitration under the current contract which expires in 1999.