Wheeling Pitt strikers: 'Settle or we'll be back!'

by Fred Gaboury & Roy Rydell

This article was reprinted from the July 5, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

NEW YORK CITY - They - the Wall Street investment firms of Merrill Lynch and Barclays Bank and Donald Smith & Co. of Paramus, N.J. - "knew we were here," a jubilant Mike Paluszek said of the 50 steelworkers who arrived here for a three-day visit on June 25.

"And they haven't seen anything yet. We will be back, bigger and better, toward the end of July." Paluszek is one of 15 AFL-CIO staffers assigned to the Wheeling-Pitt corporate campaign.

The trip, by 50 members of the Steelworkers union who have been on strike against the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation since Oct. 1, was part of the corporate campaign aimed at acquainting major investors in WHX with the damage its CEO, Ron LaBow, has done to the value of Wheeling-Pitt stock as he attempts to break the Steelworkers union. WHX is the parent company of Wheeling- Pitt Steel.

"Outfits like Merrill Lynch have an obligation to protect the investments of clients who have trusted them to manage their money," Paluszek said. "A part of that responsibility is to put pressure on LaBow to settle the strike that affects the families of 4,500 steelworkers and the communities in which they live."

The New York action, which began with coffee at the offices of the New York Central Labor Council at 6:30 a.m. on June 25, ended three days later when steelworkers from four local unions of the United Steelworkers of America began the 10-hour bus ride to their homes in the steel towns of the valleys of the Monongahela and Ohio rivers.

In the intervening days they distributed leaflets throughout the city's financial district, held a brief rally at the offices of Barclays, a mass demonstration at Merrill Lynch and visited the neighborhoods of Barclays' CEO McCallum McCarthy and Merrill Lynch biggie David Komansky.

On Wednesday night, the delegation, together with several supporters from New York labor and community groups, attended a banquet hosted by the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council.

Strikers interviewed by the World shared the views of Larry Swinger, a machinist with 33 years seniority at Wheeling- Pitt's Martins Ferry, Ohio facility, who found New York's high temperature and high humidity tough to take. "It was hard, hot and long," he said, "but it was worth it, even if we only moved them an inch."

Frank Giannamore, a member of USWA Local 1190 in Steubenville, Ohio, took the long view.

"Nine months is a long time and it's tough," he said. "But it's been worth it for another reason. It has helped stimulate a broader discussion in the labor movement about the need for solidarity and unity."

Giannamore said the reception in New York was "really great. And they've been picketing investors as far away as California. Imagine! Someone picketing for us!"

Speaker after speaker blasted Merrill Lynch and other WHX investors during a Thursday rally at corporate headquarters on the southern tip of Manhattan. Last month demonstrations took place at Dewey Square Investors in Boston and at the Mellon Bank Building in Pittsburgh.

Jim Conigliaro, assistant directing business representative of Machinists District 15, said his union was "tired of CEOs who line their own pockets with money earned by workers. We'll be even stronger," he said, "when the Machinists, Autoworkers and Steelworkers amalgamate in the year 2000."

Ed Ott, director of public policy for the central labor council, said, "Merrill Lynch has too much power over the lives of too many workers. They think they can get away with acting like a maggot and treat people like dirt because they are someplace where we can't see them. Well, they aren't," he said to cheers. Rev. Peter Laarman, a Baptist minister representing the Labor and Religion Coalition, quoted Dr. Martin Luther King's belief that the arc of history bends toward justice. "But it will bend faster if we help," he said.

Laarman, pointing toward the skyscraper housing Merrill Lynch offices, said, "People there don't worry about income security," as chants of "Workers built that building" filled the air.

Other speakers included May Chen of the Union of Needletrades Industry and Textile Employees and the Rev. Earl Kooperkamp who, after quoting the song "Which Side Are You On?", criticized the reluctance of clergy in the area to support the strikers.

"For the clergy to stand by in the face of sin and injustice," he said, "is a sin in itself."