Steelworkers shutting down Mittal blast furnaces as Monday contract deadline looms
September 02, 08 by TheFleetIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Related: USW members give union strike approval - NWI Times *over 150 comments*
by Kevin Nevers | Source: Chesterton Tribune
Some 1,400 members of United Steelworkers Local 6787 voted unanimously on Wednesday to authorize International President Leo Gerard to call a strike against ArcelorMittal if a new contract has not been reached when the current one expires at midnight Sunday.
… “I doubt if any of the locals wouldn’t vote to strike,” Gipson said. “Because most of these guys were around when the steelmakers started going bankrupt. They witnessed the crisis. The lived it. They saw retirees who lost their health care and retirees who saw their payments cut when the (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation) took over their pensions. And they know (Lakshmi Mittal) is doing pretty well right now.”
… Gipson did say that, strike or no strike, “it will take years to repair the damage done” to the relationship between the union and the company. “Everyone I’ve talked to is mad. They all know retirees who say ‘I’m tired of asking my kids to help me. I’m tired of having to decide whether to eat or buy my prescription meds.’”
Meanwhile, preparations for a strike continue. “We started banking the coke ovens and shutting down the blast furnaces,” Gipson said, although he added that the outage should have begun days ago. “In 1993 we were going to strike Bethlehem and we started taking the furnaces down well in advance of the deadline. It’s a slow process to do it properly. You run the risk of damaging things if you do it too quickly. And it wouldn’t have done anyone any good if a blast furnace was damaged and then a contract was reached.”
