Aside from hosting the rich and famous, sometimes the Waldorf hosts dinners honoring some not so savory characters. Sept. 25 was such an occasion.

The National Safety Council decided to award the president and CEO of AKSteel the Green Cross for Safety Medallion praising AKSteel for its outstanding corporate citizenship.

The only problem is that 620 AKSteel’s employees have been locked out of at its Mansfield, Ohio plant for more than a year. They have a different slant on AKSteel’s safety record.

Local 169 of the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) showed up at the Waldorf to protest the award. They charge that eight workers were killed on the job at AKSteel in the 1990s and that AKSteel was named the "number one industrial polluter" in the state of Pennsylvania.

Dozens of locked-out AKSteel workers traveled by bus to New York to protest the award, saying that corporate misconduct needs to be stopped, not awarded.

AKSteel’s CEO Richard Wardrop Jr.’s award has never been discussed by the Council’s board or membership. But AKSteel made a $125,000 contribution to the council.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has recently cited AKSteel for numerous violations. "AKSteel has a terrible safety and health record with eight workers killed in the Middletown, Ohio plant since October 1993," OSHA charged in 1996.

A USWA leaflet says that at the Ashland plant in Kentucky, workers receive a $25 gift certificate if nobody in their department reports an OSHA recordable injury. If one worker reports such an injury, everyone loses the money that month.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the Ohio Attorney General’s office have filed lawsuits against AKSteel’s Middletown plant for violations of federal and state clean air and water standards over a period of seven years.

AKSteel locked out the 620 employees at its Mansfield plant because the workers resisted the company’s plan to assign unlimited mandatory overtime and the workers refused to choose their jobs over their families. AKSteel has imported an army of out-of-state strikebreakers, including armed security guards and replacement workers.

The Steelworkers’ demonstration was held across the street from the Waldorf Astoria at the "insistence" of the New York Police Department, but the demonstration’s loudspeaker system made the crowd audible to the people entering the awards dinner. Several of the people invited to the dinner came over to the picketline and said they were staying away from the dinner after hearing the Steelworkers’ complaints.

Mike Zielinski, of Local 169 USWA in Mansfield, led the demonstration and, while taking a breather away from the chanting, said, "Steelworkers think it’s an outrage that they give an award to a company that poisons water and rips off the community. They should be on trial, not getting an award."

Jerry Moton, an African-American electric furnace operator with 32 years experience at AKSteel, said that many workers hurt on the job are not rehired. "Where can they go for a job?"

Frank Grimes said he’s represented the USWA on the National Safety Council for 12 years and this was "the first time anyone has been given this award without the consent of the board of directors. There are many companies who are more deserving of the award."

Joel Shufro of NYCOSH said the award was being given to a company with one of the worst safety records and that they got the award because of their contribution of $125,000, not for their safety record.

City Council members Christine Quinn and Steve DiBrienza came to the rally and voiced their support for the steel workers.

As this report is being written, the Steelworkers’ delegation is on their way back to Mansfield, Ohio to continue their fight for a contract without forced overtime. When this reporter called the union hall there, the brother who answered the phone said, "Local 169 Steelworkers – one day longer."