Union Assails Chinese Practices at U.S. Plant : Workplace: Employees expected to get their jobs back when the Chinese bought the bankrupt mill. But it didn’t turn out that way.
China’s Communist government espouses the rights of the working class, but laborers at its steel plant in the United States say the boss is a stingy, rotten capitalist.
CitiSteel USA Inc., a subsidiary of the China International Trust & Investment Corp., a state-run agency of the Chinese government, bought bankrupt Phoenix Steel in June, 1988, for $13.5 million. After the new owner invested an additional $56 million, it reopened the plant in March.
The venture is just one of several U.S. businesses that Beijing has dabbled in as part of a broader economic-reform policy. In recent years, for example, Chinese government entities have acquired or invested in a machine plant in the Pittsburgh area, a West Coast refinery, a chemical factory in Louisiana and a plot of timberland in the Pacific Northwest.
The steel plant in this Delaware River town had been organized by the steelworkers union, which contends that it had a promise from the new owners to rehire former workers. But CitiSteel says it promised nothing and can hire whomever it wants.
“We have hired former workers. They (Phoenix Steel) had 800 people. We have a right to select,” CitiSteel Chairman Lu Ming said.
CitiSteel has about 220 workers and expects employment to peak at about 300 by early 1990. Only about 25% of CitiSteel workers are former Phoenix employees.
CitiSteel spokesman Edwin Golin said the company cannot hire indiscriminately because Phoenix employees allegedly were cited for pilfering and sabotage during the last three years of Phoenix’s operations.
“CitiSteel needs the luxury of hiring the people that they feel are best qualified for the job, whether they were a previous worker or not, and that’s what they’re doing,” Golin said.
The union filed an unfair labor charge with the National Labor Relations Board in February, alleging that CitiSteel refuses to hire former union members. A decision is pending.
CitiSteel makes steel plate for bridges, buildings and heavy machinery. Phoenix Steel manufactured armor plate for submarines.
The steelworkers union demonstrated outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington and sent an open letter to the Chinese government that said CitiSteel’s hiring practices are an “outrageous treatment of workers.” The union hasn’t received a reply.
“It has no place in American industry. How ironic! The People’s Republic of China, which professes to be a workers’ government, in their own land, is guilty of suppressing workers in ours. . . . CitiSteel may like to call itself a ‘Socialist Conglomerate,’ but when it comes to worker issues, it acts just like the worst capitalist,” the letter asserts.
CitiSteel “refers to itself as an entrepreneurial enterprise in the United States of America,” Golin said. “They’re working within the culture of this country, and this country is free enterprise. The union is saying that’s bad.”
When the plant is fully staffed, workers will be allowed to vote on whether they want union representation, he said.
Norman P. Hayman, staff representative for the union’s District 7 in King of Prussia, Pa., said the union feels that it was duped.
It supported CitiSteel before the Delaware General Assembly for an exemption to the state’s Coastal Zone Act, which heavily restricts industries in environmentally sensitive areas such as the banks of the Delaware.
At the time, former Chancery Court Chancellor Grover C. Brown, a lawyer for L. H. Chang, a Hong Kong businessman who helped China negotiate to buy the company, testified before the state Senate on behalf of CitiSteel in its bid for the exemption.
“It is their intention to utilize those former workers who have the skills and can be the most helpful in getting the plant open,” Brown said then.
It appears that CitiSteel has literally done that--hired skilled workers only, although the union interpreted Brown’s statement to mean preference would go to all former union members.
Hayman said that in a meeting with the company in June, “they told us two-thirds of the skilled work force came from the Phoenix Steel unit,” but the unskilled work force, which is a majority of the employees, does not include former Phoenix workers, Hayman said.
“The people they really had to have they got them. It just shows an anti-union (attitude). They just don’t want to deal with the union,” Hayman said.
Some CitiSteel employees said they prefer working in a non-union plant.
One worker, who spoke on condition that he not be identified, said he was a former Phoenix Steel worker and union member but does not want the union back. He contends that the day Phoenix Steel closed, the union left town.
“They never gave us any kind of help at all, and now they want back in, and I don’t think they should,” he said.
“It would probably be worse if the union was back in the plant. They make demands, and these people are just trying to start out. Let the people try to get it together first,” he said.
He says benefits are about the same, and he’s making more money for doing the same job he did for Phoenix. He declined to say exactly how much he makes.
“There’s a lot less tension and a lot less griping. Everybody’s pulling their load. When you don’t have a union behind you, you pull your load more.
“You’re working in a more relaxed atmosphere. You’re not worrying about benefits and your rights. You just do your job and you get paid for what you do.”
Union members, some with 30 years or more service, lost seniority and their pensions, and some were sent home with less than $100 compensation.
“I don’t know what else you can do in a situation where a plant is sold,” Hayman said.
“Whatever we can do, we’re doing. At the same time, I don’t want to take away anybody’s sense of indignation. But I also think there are a lot of union people out there who are appreciative of what we’re doing,” he said.
The union’s concerns over the hiring practices caught the attention of the Delaware Senate, which passed legislation this year that would require CitiSteel to hire more former Phoenix employees by Jan. 1 or lose its operating permit.
The bill is pending in the House, and the General Assembly does not reconvene until January.
