No Talks Set in Strike at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel

The strike against Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp. entered its second day Monday with no negotiations planned. Meanwhile, a bankruptcy judge tried to settle a dispute between the company’s management and its two largest shareholders.

The management dispute is over the conduct of Wheeling-Pittsburgh’s Chapter 11 reorganization.

“My attempts to play any meaningful role in Wheeling-Pittsburgh’s affairs are regularly thwarted,” said Allen E. Paulson, the company’s largest individual shareholder and one of its 11 directors.

Paulson opposes Wheeling-Pittsburgh’s plan to distribute stock to satisfy bad debts, saying the action would dilute his holdings.

He wants the company’s lenders to restructure their loans to accommodate the steelmaker’s precarious financial condition.

Nisshin Steel Co. of Japan, the second-largest shareholder, has sided with Paulson.

Company spokesman Ken Maxcy declined comment Monday.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Warren W. Bentz was deliberating in the dispute, said Bela A. Karlowitz, an attorney representing Paulson.

Leaders of the United Steelworkers, whose members walked out Sunday morning at plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, say the rift among company directors will work to the union’s advantage in bargaining to determine the level of wage and benefit concessions needed to save the company, the nation’s seventh-largest steelmaker.

Wheeling-Pittsburgh, which filed for reorganization April 16 when it became unable to repay loans of $514 million, won authority last week to void its labor contract and moved immediately to impose 18% pay cuts for 8,200 employees. The union struck when the cuts went into effect.