Mon Valley tells U.S. Steel: 'We have a right to a future'

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DUQUESNE, Pa.—On a snowy Jan. 28 evening, almost a thousand people-steelworkers with their families and friends-gathered together in a Duquesne church. They were there because they refused to accept the idea that the U.S. Steel Corp. could simply be allowed to decide whether or not the steel communities of the Monongahela-Ohio Valley would have a future. They believed that the working people who make up those communities should have something to say about their own future.

Organized by the Tri-State Conference on Steel and United Steel Workers of America (USWA) Local 1256, the gathering focused on the situation at U.S. Steel's Duquesne Works.

In late 1983 the Duquesne Works won an industry-wide productivity award; the blast furnaces and basic oxygen shop at Duquesne were considered some of the most modern and productive facilities in the area. But there was a problem for the company. Aware of the plant's profitability, the members of USWA Local 1256 refused to agree to "giveback" concessions demanded by U.S. Steel.

A few months later, the company closed the Duquesne Works and in October announced that it would soon begin to dismantle the "hot end" of the works, known as Dorothy Six, the largest blast furnace in the Mon Valley. Under the leadership of the Tri-State Conference, union and community activists threatened to occupy the facility in order to prevent its destruction.

U.S. Steel then agreed to hold off on demolition plans until the completion of a feasibility study sponsored by Tri-State, in conjunction with USWA, the city of Pittsburgh and other municipal governments, and Allegheny County officials. At the Jan. 28 mass meeting, the results of the feasibility study were presented by Michael Locker of LockerAbrecht Associates, the New York City firm that conducted the study.

A "Steel Valley Authority"

The Tri-State Conference on Steel was organized in 1979, when union, community, and religious activists from Youngstown, Ohio, allied themselves with local union and religious forces in Pittsburgh's Mon Valley. The group has been developing a plan for a "Steel Valley Authority,' modeled on the Tennessee Valley Authority of the 1930s. The "SVA" would use the power of eminent domain to place the local steel industry under community and worker ownership.

The Locker-Abrecht feasibility study is significant because it argues that a $24-million investment (not $500 million as claimed by U.S. Steel) could ensure the profitability of the Duquesne Works. It would do this without any antiunion "giveback" concessions in wages and benefits and in a manner that would bolster production at other steel mills in the region.

What is becoming clear, however, is that U.S. Steel is not interested in maintaining a profitable steel industry in the Mon-Ohio Valley. By dismantling it, the corporation would be in a position to deal a fatal blow to a proudly organized, highly unionized sector of the labor force and to chase after bigger profits elsewhere.

Unity and determination The Jan. 28 mass meeting at Duquesne was opened with a song by Mike Stout of USWA Local 1397: "Come on and stand / Get off your knees / You're never gonna crawl / to a victory."

The words reflected the mood of the crowd. Not only are they a challenge to continued action, but they also reflect a recognition of the struggle the people of the Mon-Ohio Valley have already been through.

Leon Lynch, international vice president of the Successful plant-gate collections, resulting in large quantities of food and tens of thousands of dollars, helped stop the company from starving the strikers back to work. gests that the public authority might serve primarily as a mediator between company and community. In line with this scenario for the reopening of the plant, the feasibility study suggests how the Duquesne plant could be profitable in a "free-market" setting.

The Tri-State plan, on the other hand, specifically stresses the concept of worker-community control and emphasizes that the steel produced by the Steel Valley Authority could be sold to the federal government for use in public projects such as rebuilding bridges and roads.

But Tri-State organizers stress repeatedly that feasibility studies alone will accomplish nothing. They argue that only solid grass-roots organizing, spearheaded by the unions, can generate positive solutions to the economic crisis.

It is not clear, at this point, what direction the TriState campaign will ultimately take. What is clear is that it has generated tremendous enthusiasm in the Mon-Ohio Valley, and significant numbers of working people are in motion to shape their own future.

Speakers platform at Tri-state steelworkers' conference. From left to right:

Mike Bilscik, president, USWA Local 1256; Tom Michlovic, state assemblyman; Mike Stout, grievanceman, USWA Local 1397; and Leon Lynch, international vice president, USWA

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"Come on and stand, you're never gonna crawl to a victory"

B5 Or Beth Boerger