Buffalo News (New York), May 19, 2007, Saturday

Copyright 2007 The Buffalo News

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Buffalo News (New York)

May 19, 2007 Saturday

FINAL EDITION

see also
http://www.buffalonews.com/145/story/79324.html?imw=Y

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. D6

HEADLINE: Lackawanna plant, union win 'Champions at Work' award;

Managers and labor saved the steel mill

BYLINE: By Fred O. Williams - NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER

BODY:

When Bethlehem Steel went out of business in 2003, its mill in Lackawanna almost went with it.

William Pienta, now head of the Steelworkers District 4, remembers being told not to bother attending contract talks -- the mill was tagged for shutdown anyway.

But "they refused to die," he said. "Management [locally] said 'like hell we're gonna close.' "

The remarks came during an award ceremony Friday recognizing the work of managers and labor that defied the odds and saved the plant, now with about 268 jobs.

The Steelworkers Local 2604 and Mittal Steel USA, the current owner of the Lackawanna plant, received the "Champions at Work" award from Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

"There's a part of the story [of steel] we don't tell enough -- the progress report," said Lou Jean Fleron, director of the Cornell Industrial and Labor Relations School's Institute for Industry Studies.

Losses that steel plants suffered often overshadow their progress in technology and environmental protection, workers' health, pay and benefits, and other advances, she said.

Bethlehem sold off its assets in bankruptcy to International Steel Group in 2003. In 2005, Netherlands-based Mittal Steel Group bought ISG. Last year Mittal merged with Arcelor, forming Luxembourg-based Arcelor Mittal, the global parent of Mittal Steel USA and its Lackawanna operation.

To keep the local plant alive, the steelworkers gave up work rules they and their fathers had fought for over generations, workers said -- even while Bethlehem's pensions were frozen and its retirees lost their health care coverage.

"Our ability to adapt got us where we are today," said Anthony Fortunato, president of Steelworkers Local 2604. "Without teamwork and partnership we are doomed to repeat our past."

The result is a plant that produces the same volume -- 500,000 tons of galvanized steel a year -- with half the men, operations manager Carl Pfeifer said.

Pay, about $18 to $21 an hour, is about the same, workers said, plus a weekly bonus based on production that can add 5 or 10 percent.

The concessions were far from popular, but "that was the only way it was going to work," said James Hickey of Amherst, a steelworker who started with Bethlehem in 1973.

Management has also changed, softening what used to be an autocratic stance. "They used to just do things and say, 'live with it,' " said Andrew Mihalik, the USW-Mittal training coordinator. Now there's more discussion beforehand.

The three-shift galvanizing operation has been running practically flat-out since it was launched in 1982, Pfeifer said, despite its location far from suppliers and customers in the Midwest.

Raw steel a quarter-inch thick comes to the plant in giant coils from sister plants in Ohio and Indiana. Lackawanna rolls it into sheets, treats it to reduce brittleness, and coats it with zinc in a "hot dip" process. Protected against corrosion, the galvanized steel goes back to the Midwest, chiefly to auto plants in Michigan and Ohio. Eighty percent of the plant's output goes to automakers.

When the mill started up, Bethlehem was shutting down the blast furnaces of its basic steel production nearby on the Lake Erie shore. "We were given very little chance of lasting more than a year or so," he said.

Mittal's galvanized operation and the bar mill nearby owned by Republic Steel represent the remnants of Bethlehem's former operations, with a combined total of about 500 production jobs, union officials said.

A serious accident in the plant Thursday injected a solemn note into the celebration. Production worker Stanley Brese lost an arm after he was drawn into a steel rolling machine.

OSHA investigators were on the site Thursday and will issue a report after speaking with the accident victim, area director Arthur Dube said.

Workers said it was the first serious accident they could think of in several years.

The ceremony Friday drew Mittal corporate officials and area elected leaders, including State Assemblyman Jack Quinn III and State Senators Antoine Thompson and William Stachowski.

Quinn's community liaison Tom Wisniewski, a former Machinists Union director, nominated the Lackawanna plant and union for the award.

The keynote address was given by former Buffalo Bill and current broadcaster Steve Tasker.

The Cornell "Champions at Work" award was launched after a study in 2000 of constructive labor relations at Western New York workplaces. The study linked labor-management cooperation to high-quality production and good-paying jobs.

The Champions award for Mittal and Steelworkers Local 2604 is the third given by Cornell's labor relations school. Previous recipients were the United Auto Workers Local 897 and the Ford Buffalo Stamping Plant in Hamburg, and the Communications Workers of America Local 14177 and New Era Cap Co. in Derby.

e-mail: fwilliams@buffnews.com

GRAPHIC: Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News Darrilyn Council watches a roll of galvanized steel take shape at Mittal's plant in Lackawanna.