Bethlehem turns back clock on equality

By Paul Kaczocha

In the late 1960s Bethlehem Steel built the Burns Harbor plant on a green field site in Indiana. More than 35 years latter it still remains the last fully integrated steel facility built in the United States - "fully integrated" meaning making the steel from scratch, not that Bethlehem went out of their way to hire a diverse work force.

To the contrary, they went all over the country trying to hire a homogeneous group of white southern men in hopes of avoiding an organized work force. Despite the plant being located less than 10 miles from a large population of Blacks in the city of Gary, Bethlehem recruited from southern Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Not many Blacks or any women were hired until the second phase of construction started on the "hot" end of the mill. This was the coke ovens, blast furnaces and basic oxygen furnaces - the actual steelmaking facilities - the hottest, dirtiest and hardest jobs. All the good-paying jobs in the rolling facilities of the plate mill, hot mill and sheet and tin mill were already filled.

This hiring practice and the discriminatory promotion and transfer procedure was challenged by Black workers in the 1970s through lawsuits. The cases at Burns Harbor and around the country were consolidated in federal court. Bethlehem Steel and eight other steel companies agreed to a landmark consent decree for the hiring and training of minorities and women for the crafts and forever altering the job transfer procedure in the plants by making plant seniority the yardstick of competition.

However, capitalism would not let the fruits of that consent decree take root. The economic depression of the early 1980s gave them the opportunity to decimate the work force of the steel industry by closing hundreds of plants and slashing hundreds of thousands of jobs.

As a result, by the end of the 1980s the consent decree was dissolved in court without the implementation goals for the hiring and training of minorities ever having been met. Meanwhile, the capitalists began rebuilding the industry into non-union mini-mills. There is more steel making capacity now in the United States than in 1980 with a fraction of the work force to make it and most of them not unionized.

In the 1990s steel mills like Bethlehem slowly started hiring without the eye of the courts on them and without their hiring practices scrutinized by any union contract hiring provisions. However, the craft job openings were still subject to the 50/50 affirmative action provisions of the decree that were incorporated into the contract.

Workers hired for a Bethlehem Steel job now are given a battery of psychological and aptitude tests and interviews. As a result, very few Black workers are being hired even in the crafts. At the Burns Harbor plant where I work the percentage of Black workers has dropped dramatically. One company source told me that less than 5 percent of the workers hired are Black. My union president says it is an embarrassingly low number. Unfortunately, the hiring issue was not part of recent contract negotiations. Something has to be done to bring about diversity in the hiring practices of Bethlehem Steel. Workers in the plant say this is just a repeat of history. Like Yogi Berra said, "It's like déja vu all over again."

Because the work force at Burns Harbor was basically all hired within a short period of time, the retirements are happening now at an accelerated rate. This means that young, white, mostly male workers will get the first chance at filling these jobs.

Black and white workers at the plant have been raising this issue in the union for almost two years, with no result. The company says that they have tried to hire Black workers from outside the plant for the unfilled craft job openings, but they don't want to hire into the steel mill. They also claim that other Black workers can't pass the tests to work as laborers. Black workers in disproportionate numbers can pass tests to go into the military and run multimillion-dollar equipment, but Bethlehem wants us to believe that they can't pass the tests to work as a laborer in a steel mill.

The only bright spot in the situation is the remnants of the consent decree that were incorporated into the contract for the training of minorities and women for craft job openings in the plant. Preferential placement is given to them for the craft training on a 50/50 basis. However, with fewer and fewer minorities hired, there are fewer applying for the craft training.

The frustration that workers are feeling in the plant is giving rise to talk of another class action suit. Whether or not this is the best action can only be determined when there is an aggressive approach devised by the union and community working together to resolve this issue.

The way that Bethlehem is turning back the clock on hiring is just another example of how capital is always looking to shake off any reforms that are won and how relentless they are in trying to divide the working class with racism.

Paul Kaczocha is an Indiana steelworker.