Source: AFP
Nippon Steel’s proposed takeover of United States Steel has raised concerns in Pittsburgh, where the metal once dominated the economy and still looms large in the collective psyche.
Critics such as the United Steelworkers (USW) see the trade as the latest threat to emerge in a long-running fight to keep the industry alive after the 1970s and 1980s plant closures that plagued America’s Rust Belt.
“There’s so much history here and a lot of pride that goes with it,” said USW’s Bernie Hall, a 4th generation metal worker. “It wouldn’t be western Pennsylvania without steel.”
In December, US Steel signed a $14.9 billion deal to be sold to Japan’s Nippon Steel, which pledged investments to keep its Pennsylvania mills competitive with foreign producers and newer “mini-mills” in the lower-tax American South the environment.
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Source: AFP
But Hall, head of the Pennsylvania chapter for the USW, said the Japanese company has been evasive about specific plans for Pittsburgh-area factories in an area called Mon Valley, the oldest of which dates to 1875.
Both President Joe Biden and challenger Donald Trump have vowed to scrap the deal as they both compete for votes, stalling the deal, likely until at least the November election.
At stake are the Pittsburgh area’s last remaining steel mills, located just outside the city.
The city was transformed
For most Americans, Pittsburgh remains essentially synonymous with steel, in part because of the prominence of American football team the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Source: AFP
But the complexion of a metropolis once known as the Smoke City changed dramatically after the last plants closed in the 1980s.
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Steel “is still part of our identity, but we’re cut off from that identity,” said former steelworker Edward Stankowski Jr., whose memoir, “Memory of Steel,” describes his exit from the industry with thousands of others in the early 1980s.
Stankowski, whose childhood home in Pittsburgh overlooked steel mills, started in the industry after high school in the 1970s, when many young men saw the job as a ticket to the middle class, trading hard work in a dangerous environment for good wages and stable pension.
The land where Stankowski’s factory once stood on Pittsburgh’s South Side has been rezoned and now includes apartments called “Hot Metal Flats” and a Cheesecake Factory restaurant.
“I don’t miss it,” said Stankowski, who went to college after leaving steel and is now a professor at La Roche University. “I like to have clean air. I like to have clean water.”
Steel was a good fit for western Pennsylvania, an area with waterways and an abundant supply of coal, but “there’s been a fundamental, almost tectonic shift in the geography of steel,” said regional economist Chris Briem of the University of Pittsburgh.
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Mon Valley plants “have been around for a long time,” Briem said. “If they don’t get a lot of new reinvestment, they probably won’t be competitive for much longer.”
Locals see symbolism in the renaming of the US Steel Tower downtown as a UPMC building by the area’s largest employer, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Long term commitment?
Once owned by Andrew Carnegie, the Edgar Thomson plant in Braddock is one of three plants in western Pennsylvania operated by US Steel along with a fourth plant in eastern Pennsylvania in an operation known as the “Mon Valley Works”.
Nippon has pledged to keep factories open and invest $1.4 billion in USW-represented facilities through 2026, when the current labor contract expires. The company has also committed to keeping US Steel’s 1,000-employee office in downtown Pittsburgh.
“You can’t tell the story of US Steel without Pennsylvania playing a leading role, and Nippon Steel will keep it that way,” Nippon Vice President Takahiro Mori wrote in a June 9 report in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
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Nippon hinted that the chances of US approval could improve after November. Proponents of the deal argue that US Steel could be dissolved if the deal dies, adding more uncertainty to US Steel’s 3,000 hourly workers in Pennsylvania.
But the USW says Nippon’s plans are unclear and give the company a slump in a recession.
“They say they’re going to invest in the factories,” Hall said. “What does this mean;”
Source: AFP
The workers want a sign that whoever runs Mon Valley “is interested in running these mills for the long term and really investing in this community,” Hall said. “That’s exactly what they’re not hearing from either Nippon or US Steel.”
Some Mon Valley workers interviewed by AFP denounced the deal as a money grab by US Steel management, fearing for their jobs. But others are open to it.
Alex Barna, an engineer on the West Mifflin project, described himself as “on the fence” as he weighs his hopes and concerns, saying of Nippon, “they may be in this for a long time.”
Source: AFP