Steelworkers win at Wheeling-Pitt! 10-month strike wins pensions, wages and plant reopening title

by Denise Winebrenner

This article was reprinted from the August 9, 1997, issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

PITTSBURGH - Jim Roth, a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 2256 in Beech Bottom, West Va., was all smiles - and well he should be.

Only days before, a tentative agreement between the USWA and the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation had brought an end to a 10-month strike by 4,500 steelworkers in three states.

But more importantly - at least in Roth's eyes - the agreement had saved his job. Under terms reached Aug. 1, Wheeling-Pitt agreed to cancel announced plans to close the Beech Bottom plant and another at Martins Ferry, Ohio.

"I never dreamed that we would win a contract where the company is required to keep a plant open," Roth told the World, "that and meeting our demand for a defined benefit pension plan that meets industry standards. We stuck it out, stuck together and won!"

In a press conference announcing the settlement, USWA President George Becker hailed the solidarity and determination of the 4,500 steelworkers and their families who held the line for 10 long months. "This was a remarkable victory and not just because of the issues involved or the fact that it was the longest major steel strike in modern history," he said.

"It was remarkable because these workers and their families stood up to one of the most cruel and sophisticated anti-worker, anti-union campaigns in the history of the labor movement.

Becker also pointed out that not one member of the union, despite 10 months without a paycheck, had lost his or her car or home. "And," he added, "not one of our members crossed the picketline."

Ron Labow, CEO of WHX, the parent company of Wheeling-Pitt, and the union both saw the union's demand for a defined benefit pension that met the standards of pensions of other basic steel makers as a central point in the negotiations. And that, too, was resolved in favor of the union.

If approved by the membership, the new contract doubles the present pension and provides retiring steelworkers with a guaranteed, $40-per-year-of-service pension, the industry standard.

A Wheeling-Pitt employee with 40 years of service can retire at $1,600 per month; a worker age 55 with 30 years service can retire with a monthly pension of $1,200. The monthly " multiplier" will increase to $44 on June 1, 2003.

"If you look at what we agreed to in New York and you look at the union's proposal last September, they're not real different," Andrew "Lefty" Palm, the union's Pennsylvania director, said.

"They could afford it all along, but the company never gives you anything but a hard time."

Other provisions of the five-year agreement include a $2,000 signing bonus and an hourly wage increase of $1.50. Wheeling-Pitt also agreed to pay workers at least $200 per week until they are called back to work.

Wheeling-Pitt also agreed to ante up $2 million to pay for medical expenses incurred by steelworker families during the strike.

From the picket lines to the union's Pittsburgh headquarters, steelworkers said the overwhelming support from their union, the AFL-CIO, community groups and small businesses turned the tide and defeated Wheeling-Pitt's union-busting agenda.

For 10 long months LaBow had turned a deaf ear to union demands, unfair labor practice charges by the NLRB, the intervention of a U.S. senator and pleas from the community to sit down and iron out a contract with the USWA.

"Never!" LaBow told steelworkers who sacrificed to bring Wheeling-Pitt out of bankruptcy and make it the ninth largest in the industry. "Never!" the Wall Street financier said as he sat on a stash of $400 million gleaned from profit margins - double the rest of the industry.

The Steelworkers' answer came from Jim Bowen, the union's chief negotiator: "'Never' came today," he said at a press conference announcing the agreement. that came after 10 days of intense bargaining in New York.

But the victory is bittersweet for Palm and the union leadership. Computerization, pressure from the non-union mini-mill sector of the industry and imports will result in job combinations and workplace "efficiencies" both of which are also part of the standard union contract with the rest of the industry.

But the union extracted a price - $37,000 per job in "buy-outs" to 850 workers over the next 18 months. (Union estimates put the number of workers who are eligible to accept a buyout at 2,000.)

Eligible workers who wish can choose to take an option that pays $400 per month subsidy plus full health care and insurance benefits until he or she qualifies for Social Security benefits.

Frank Rico, president of Local 1223, Yorkville, Ohio, and Mickey Forte, president of Local 1187 in Allenport, Pa., both voted against the contract because of the jobs issue.

A concerned Rico pointed out that given the health and safety record at the Yorkville plant, 18 months also buys time to fight for safe crew sizes and training. Both presidents fully expect their members to approve the proposal.

The labor-management partnership or "Cooperative Partnership Agreement" which had been in the old contract, is not part of the new agreement.

The amnesty section of the tentative agreement allows the few steelworkers fired during the strike to have their cases resolved through the grievance procedure rather than the courts.