Steelworkers Strike Wheeling-Pittsburgh : Action Is Union’s First Walkout Against Major Firm in 26 Years

Members of the United Steelworkers went on strike at 12:01 a.m. today against Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp. after contract negotiations broke down Saturday evening. It was the union’s first strike against a major steelmaker in 26 years.

“Until there’s a livable contract, there will be no . . . employees in this plant,” said local vice president John Tirpack of Yorkville, Ohio.

Steel worker Jack Orbin Jr. of Yorkville said Wheeling-Pittsburgh’s pay cuts would force him into bankruptcy.

“If I have to liquidate, I’m taking the company down with me,” he said as he left the Yorkville plant around 10:30 p.m., the end of the last shift before the strike began.

Several hundred workers, chanting “Union, union, union” and singing “God Bless America,” gathered outside the plant and burned copies of the company’s new proposal.

The strike was called after Paul Rusen, chief negotiator for the approximately 8,200 current employees and about 10,000 pensioners of the nation’s seventh-largest steelmaker, announced that there had been no movement in negotiations between the two sides Saturday. It was the first formal bargaining in more than a month.

“I’d say they’re both pretty much hard-nosed,” federal mediator Robert Householder said.

The two sides are split over the size of wage, benefit and work-rule concessions that should be granted to Wheeling-Pittsburgh, which is reorganizing under Chapter 11 of the federal Bankruptcy Act.

Earlier, U.S. District Judge Glen Mencer, hearing arguments at his home in Smethport, rejected a union request to reinstate the union contract immediately but asked both sides to submit legal briefs by Aug. 12.

After a federal bankruptcy court judge’s ruling, giving the company permission to abrogate its union contract, the company said it would impose new work rules and cut total pay and benefits for its 8,200 current workers by 18%, or nearly $4 an hour.

The strike deadline was set at nine plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia for the hour when the company said it would exercise its newly acquired authority to reduce labor costs. At least two of those plants were not operating this weekend.

Union bargainers offered to delay the walkout if the company would delay its plans to cut total labor costs--wages, pensions and benefits--from the current $21.40 per hour to $17.50 per hour.

Wheeling-Pittsburgh declined the offer, although company Vice President Joseph Scalise Jr. had warned that a strike could be fatal to a company with outstanding debt approaching $530 million.