Workers battle AKSteel rent-a-goons

By Wally Kaufman

MANSFIELD, Ohio - It may seem improbable, but this aging steel town is in the eye of the storm of labor's fightback against ruthless globalized corporations as union steelworkers take on a Japanese owned steel corporation and a goon squad imported from Poland.

Some 5,000 workers marched through this steel town Nov. 20 shouting, "Scabs and AKSteel go home." The march was like a dress rehearsal of the protest in Seattle Nov. 30 by thousands of workers, environmentalists and human rights groups.

The "protest on the Puget" is directed against the World Trade Organization (WTO), an unelected and unaccountable body that nullifies local, state and national laws to insure maximum corporate profits.

At a rally in the Town Square, United Steelworkers (USWA) District 1 President Dave McCall declared, "ARMCO/AKSteel has brought corporate terrorism to Mansfield. These are professional thugs and scabs imported into Mansfield." He was referring to what USWA Local 169 called the "paramilitary occupation of Mansfield" by Securecorp, a rent-a-thug outfit based in Poland.

ARMCO was bought out by the Japanese-owned AKSteel, further underlining that these workers face ruthless globalized profiteering. The steelworkers have been locked out for three months as ARMCO/AKSteel seeks a free hand to slash the work force and contract out hundreds of jobs. Another issue is unlimited forced overtime. The workers are demanding higher wages and a pension equal to that of other union steelworkers.

Mansfield Mayor Lydia Reed pointed out that ARMCO/AKSteel has filed a lawsuit seeking to nullify a recent ordinance establishing city control over security companies, an attempt to protect the town's citizens from the fascist-like Securecorps goons. "There is a crisis in our city," she said. "This is our city and we will keep our city ... We will be here, united, when AKSteel's folks will be gone."

ARMCO made steel for decades, "a solid, high-tech, profitable company," said Local President Mark Robertson, "and all we want is to keep making steel with a fair contract."

Ohio State Legislator Bill Harknett said the highly trained mill workers made $40 million dollars for the company last year. "Why are they locked out?" he demanded. "Put these workers back to work, then negotiate a fair contract!"

Mansfield is not alone in facing this modern-day global Godzilla. The City of Austin, Texas passed a resolution, approved by a dozen other cities, demanding an "end to WTO policies that ... undermine the city's authority to regulate within its jurisdiction."

The resolution states that the WTO settles trade complaints with a "kangaroo court of unaccountable bureaucrats [who] can overturn laws that have been established through the democratic process."

California recently passed a law outlawing MTBE, a cancer causing additive. The company manufacturing MTBE is suing the state for $970 million in lost profits. WTO and NAFTA "have ruled for the corporations in every single complaint to date," the Austin resolution says.

"Provisions in NAFTA, WTO, and the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investments allow a single corporation to blackmail an entire country into ... submission," said Jere Locke, with the Austin Coalition for Fair Trade. These trade agreements are "in reality attacks on democracy, workers' rights, the environment, and wages."

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a speech to the National Press Club that "global corporations determine the global market," and that their WTO "claims the authority to challenge state and national laws that conflict with its rules ... rules that protect corporate profits, not people."

There is a worldwide demand that the U.N. be empowered to control world commerce, that the rules for world commerce be made in an open, democratic environment, which the U.N. can provide.

"Corporate America is on a mission to destroy the organized labor movement," said a representative of the Northeast Council of Building Trades in Mansfield.

"It won't happen." Thirty local unions donated $11,000 to the embattled AKSteel workers on top of $16,000 donated earlier by Region 2D of the UAW and many other donations by area unions.

Shilia Kyle-Reno, Columbus regional director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, told the Mansfield crowd, "Stand together and send a message to the halls of government that corporate greed cannot be the primary motive force in our nation!"