Steelworkers OK Pact With 16% Pay Cuts

The United Steelworkers said Saturday that its members overwhelmingly ratified a contract containing 16% pay cuts, ending a 98-day walkout against financially crippled Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp.

“The picket lines come down now,” union negotiator Paul D. Rusen said in announcing ratification by a vote of 5,924 to 789.

The first workers were being called back to the company’s Monessen, Pa., and Steubenville, Ohio, plants to begin work Saturday, company spokesman Ray Johnson said.

More workers were being called back for shifts today, and most workers were expected to be back in a week as the plants are gradually reactivated, he said.

Firm Seeks to Survive

The company, reorganizing under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code, persuaded 8,200 steel workers in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio to accept the pay cuts to help it survive.

“What the workers are saying to us now is put your actions where your mouth is. We intend to do that,” said George A. Ferris, chief executive of the company.

The contract, representing the fourth round of union concessions since 1982, will give Wheeling-Pittsburgh one of the lowest labor cost rates in the domestic steel industry.

Eleven banks, holding $332 million of Wheeling-Pittsburgh’s $530 million in debts, tried Friday to convince a federal bankruptcy judge that the steelmaker could not survive under the new contract.

Judge Cleared Settlement

But they later dropped their objections, and Judge Warren W. Bentz cleared the settlement to proceed after Wheeling-Pittsburgh agreed to a $12-million cap on payments it may have to make to employees in eliminating jobs.

Union members voted by mail earlier in the week.

The contract, negotiated over 14 months, reduces total labor costs from $21.40 to $18 per hour. Hourly wages fall from an average of around $12 to $11.14.

The union’s contracts with the nation’s largest steelmakers expire next July.

No. 1 producer United States Steel Corp. has said it will demand equal treatment from the union, but Steelworkers President Lynn Williams has said that no healthy company should expect the concessions granted to Wheeling-Pittsburgh.