Strom Engineering — the Minnetonka, Minn., firm supplying some of the workers who are replacing 2,200 United Steelworkers union members locked out of Allegheny Technologies since Aug. 15 — apparently is behind a help-wanted ad on Craigslist seeking seasoned steelworkers in the Pittsburgh area.
The ad promised weekly pay of $1,700 to $3,000 depending on the job and the applicant’s skills and experience.
There were a few conditions: successful applicants will be escorted across a picket line and be expected to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
ATI and Strom aren’t talking about their relationship, but USW officials have identified Strom as the company their employer is using.
Assuming the replacement workers — or scabs as union members call them — work 52 weeks a year, $1,700 to $3,000 a week translates to $88,400 to $156,000 a year.
Compare that to the $94,000 that Allegheny Technologies said average union members make each year.
The USW officials said the main reason those paychecks are so large is that the company insists union members routinely work shifts of 12 hours or more because ATI refuses to hire new workers as older workers retire. That causes some union workers to rack up 700 hours or more of overtime each year, union workers said.
ATI said that’s not the case. On its website, the company said workers earned as much as $108,410 working 24 hours fewer than the 2,080 hours someone working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year would log. About 85 percent of its union employees worked less than 400 hours of overtime in 2014, and many union members work five, eight-hour shifts each week, the company stated.
USW officials declined to comment on the company’s numbers, citing the resumption of contract talks Friday. But here’s what one union worker had to say about ATI’s numbers: “X#%?#%!”
The worker, who asked not to be identified, said he knows of no type of union worker whose hourly pay and incentives would add up to the $52.70 an hour necessary to earn $108,410 by working just 2,056 hours annually.
Paying contingent workers as much or considerably more than regular workers isn’t the only controversial pay practice at ATI.
This spring, only 49 percent of its shareholders supported the company’s executive pay plan after two proxy advisory firms advised them to vote it down. “We remain concerned by the company’s continued failure to appropriately align executive compensation with corporate performance,” said Glass Lewis, one of the firms.
Glass Lewis has given the company’s pay plan an F grade in every year since 2009 except last year, when the company bagged a D.
The other advisor, ISS Proxy Advisory Services, didn’t like the fact that the company paid executives generous cash incentives last year even though ATI generated negative one-, three- and five-year returns.
“The above-target cash payouts raise particular concern given that a majority of the financial goals were achieved below threshold levels necessary to trigger a payout,” ISS wrote in its analysis.
Allegheny Technologies chairman, president and CEO Richard Harshman received compensation valued at $8 million last year.
On Wednesday, company spokesman Dan Greenfield told investors the company is reconsidering its executive pay plan.
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State and local taxpayers will provide up to $10 million of the $60 million Alcoa is investing in a 3-D printing research facility at its technical center in Upper Burrell, Westoreland County. The facility is expected to create more than 100 full-time jobs by 2017, a year after it opens, according to Alcoa.
The taxpayer money will come in the form of grants, tax credits and tax abatements. It will be provided by the state, Westmoreland County, Upper Burrell and the Burrell school district.
If all $10 million is awarded and 100 jobs are created, that translates into a taxpayer cost of $100,000 per job.
One can only hope taxpayers get a better return on their investment than Alcoa has provided to its shareholders.
Including dividends, Alcoa has generated returns of -40 percent through August this year; -2 percent over the last five years; -58 percent over the last ten years; and –63 percent over the last 15 years. As for creating jobs over that period, Alcoa went from having 107,700 employees at the end of 1999 to 59,000 at the end of last year.
Len Boselovic: lboselovic@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1941.
First Published: September 13, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
