The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.24           June 23, 1997 
 
 
Wheeling-Pitt Strikers Keep Up Fight, Despite Pressure From Company  

BY DAVID SANDOR
After eight months on the picket lines, steelworkers striking against Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Co. remain adamant in their demand for a pension. At the same time, Wheeling-Pitt investors and Ronald LaBow, chairman of Wheeling-Pitt's parent company WHX, are using threats and pressures to try to weaken the strikers' resolve.

Some 4,500 members of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) began their strike against Wheeling-Pitt on Oct. 1, 1996. The strikers are demanding that Wheeling-Pitt establish a pension plan that will meet the standard of pensions paid under USWA contracts with other unionized basic steel mills in the United States. The current substandard pension was set up after a bankruptcy and subsequent 89-day strike in 1985.

Wheeling-Pitt is the ninth largest integrated steel company in the United States. The strikers have kept eight mills in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia shut tight from the beginning of the strike.

The strikers have been getting stepped up financial support from other steelworkers through regularized solidarity efforts, such as monthly plantgate collections. The USWA authorized locals in the basic steel industry to do the collections and other fund-raising in late January. Many locals have acted on this, in many cases with the participation of strikers.

The union has organized buses to bring steelworkers and other unionists from Chicago; Gary, Indiana; Detroit; Cleveland; and from throughout the Ohio River Valley, to name just a few of the tours that have visited the picket lines and strike headquarters.

This solidarity has been welcomed by strikers. Ralph Rowland, a by-products worker with 26 years in the coke mill, said, "We have to stick together. There needs to be more of this because we're all in trouble. The companies are getting more control, so if you don't stick together you're just not going to win." Expressing the resolve of many strikers you meet on the picket line, Rowland added, " I don't want to go back there and work for nothing - I wouldn't go back to that."

An "AFL-CIO Solidarity Conference" around the Wheeling- Pitt strike was held April 26 at the Westin William Penn Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh. The conference was chaired by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and attended by local union officials from the three-state region. A delegation of strikers from several Wheeling-Pitt locals also in attended. As part of the event, participants watched a video on the strike that is now available.

On May 19, the strikers joined members of the Service Employees International Union in a rally, march, and town meeting against Beverly Enterprises, the largest nursing home chain in the United States. The National Labor Relations Board has filed charges of labor law violations against the owners for firing 500 workers who struck the company's facilities in 1996.

On May 29, some 80 strikers and supporters picketed in Boston at the office of Dewey Square Investors, which owns 10 percent of WHX. The pickets were demanding that WHX return to the bargaining table.

LaBow commented, "I really feel they should be picketing me. I feel left out." He added, "I'll tell you what Dewey Square told me: `Don't give in, if you give in you'll bust the company.' " Protests are also planned in June against WHX investors in New York and Pittsburgh.

The determination of the strikers has put pressure on the government. In early May the NLRB issued a complaint against Wheeling-Pitt, charging the company "failed to bargain in good faith" with the USWA. The complaint also says the strike was "caused and prolonged by Wheeling- Pittsburgh's unfair labor practices." An NLRB spokesman said the agency is considering further charges against Wheeling Pitt, while the company's complaints against the union will be dismissed as lacking in merit.

Negotiations brokered by U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller and the Federal Mediation Services held in Washington, D.C., in mid-May have broken down. Rockefeller was forced to say, "It has become clear to me that substantial hurdles have been erected to the resolution of this dispute his [LaBow's] refusal to honor that commitment [to negotiate] this week is deeply disturbing."

The May 19 issue of Business Week magazine reports major stockholders "agree that Wheeling-Pitt needs low pension costs and job cuts to compete against low-cost, nonunion mini-mills. So even as the stock falls, large institutional investors have been buying." On May 14, WHX announced a loss of $40.7 million for the first quarter of 1997.

Tony Dutrow, a member of USWA Local 1557 in Pittsburgh, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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