Former federal prosecutor Jeff Klink, who routinely deals with ex-Russian police officers and other gritty characters in ferreting out overseas fraud for Fortune 500 clients, says he owes his people skills to three hot, dirty summers spent at U.S. Steel’s coke plant in Clairton.
“It was somewhat of a Wild West atmosphere because there were so many people in that mill,” said Mr. Klink, 58, owner of Klink & Co., Downtown. “It was a really great opportunity ... to work with all these blue collar guys. You learned how to work with everybody. Those kinds of jobs don’t exist today.”
As an undergraduate student at Pitt, Mr. Klink began building and repairing coke oven doors at Clairton in 1976. He was paid $7 an hour — about $29.55 in current dollars — plus profit sharing.
“I did have a job title for the summer, which I thought was nice: stupid college kid,” Mr. Klink recalled, saying a union boss would “specifically ask for the services of the stupid college kid.”
His co-workers included Louie Louie, who got his nickname because he repeated everything he said.
“Eventually, he was banished to another part of the mill so nobody would have to interact with him,” Mr. Klink recalled.
There was also the son of a mill supervisor, who union workers stuffed in a locker to cure him of his superior attitude. The supervisor didn’t intervene.
“For him, [the mill] was something different from anything he ever encountered,” Mr. Klink said. “It was an almost immediate change of attitude.”
He said the United Steelworkers union was a lot more powerful then, which meant a few workers took lounging around pretty seriously.
“There were guys who refused to work. They were in the minority, but they were there,” Mr. Klink recalled, identifying them as “multifaceted work avoiders.”
Some of the skulkers spent their time fishing.
“Why anybody thought it was a good idea to eat catfish out of the Mon River in 1977, I don’t know,” said Mr. Klink, who remembers coughing up particulates from the plant’s air months later.
Mr. Klink said his grandfather worked at Clairton’s furnaces for more than 50 years and served as a union grievance officer. His father worked there as well on a construction unit that built additions to the plant.
Mr. Klink said U.S. Steel let him work as much as he wanted, which meant he sometimes worked up to 80 hours a week. Anything over 40 hours paid time and a half.
“All the guys wondered wondered why you would go to college when you could make that kind of money,” Mr. Klink said.
But go to college he did, earning a law degree from Pitt after his undergraduate degree in history. After working as a prosecutor in the Allegheny County district attorney’s office, Mr. Klink was a federal prosecutor in Philadelphia before opening Klink & Co. in 2001.
The firm helps corporate clients uncover fraud, comply with anti-bribery and corruption laws, and perform due diligence on potential business partners and acquisition targets. In addition to its Three Gateway Center headquarters, the firm has offices in New York, London and Hong Kong.
Mr. Klink’s summers at Clairton made a lot of that possible.
“Think about it in terms of college costs today. You were able to pay all of your tuition and most of the extras by working in the mill. Today, that’s not remotely possible,” Mr. Klink said. “Kids today don’t have those kinds of opportunities.”
Len Boselovic: lboselovic@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1941.
First Published: July 11, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
