Once cherished for its exemplary conduct as a good neighbor and partner, Allegheny Technologies Inc. now behaves like a juvenile delinquent, carelessly damaging local communities.
Before the specialty steel manufacturer Allegheny Ludlum merged with Teledyne two decades ago to form ATI, the company was a community asset, directed by managers who cared deeply about both the quality of specialty steel and their communities’ quality of life. In those days, townspeople referred to Allegheny Ludlum as Uncle AL.
ATI is butchering that time-honored relationship. It has demanded tax abatements and forced excessive overtime on weary workers. On Aug. 15, it unlawfully locked its 2,200 skilled union employees out of their jobs at a dozen mills in six states despite the United Steelworkers’ clearly stated willingness to continue working. Now ATI is wasting untold millions on security guards and highly paid, yet inexperienced, replacement workers. ATI has converted the company from a community pillar into a pariah.
Since evicting steelworkers from their jobs — including those in Western Pennsylvania mills in Brackenridge, Vandergrift, Bagdad, Latrobe and Midland — ATI has engaged in an aggressive campaign to try to turn community members against USW members, vainly attempting to characterize them as excessively paid.
It hasn’t worked because community members know ATI deliberately manipulated the $94,000 pay figure it cites. That level of pay includes compensation for hundreds of hours of forced overtime. Some steelworkers have labored 12-hour days, seven days a week for months, even a year — some willingly, but most not. To earn $94,000, ATI steelworkers must put in 350 to 400 hours of overtime, which adds up to an additional two and a half months of work a year.
The community also is well aware that ATI is hiring replacement workers and handing each of them as much as $156,000 a year, plus room, board and transportation. ATI is giving outsiders with no knowledge of its mills nearly three times what the labor agreement calls for it to provide in regular compensation to its experienced, skilled and dedicated steelworkers who told ATI they wanted to continue working.
In addition, community members know ATI gave many on its top leadership team, including CEO Richard Harshman, raises of up to 70 percent last year, increasing by millions of dollars the annual compensation for country clubbers who never labor in hot, hazardous or physically exhausting conditions.
By contrast, steelworkers confront perilous conditions in ATI mills. At the USW union hall in Brackenridge, a granite memorial bears the names of 48 workers killed in the mill since 1929. That is more than one death on the job every other year.
In the ATI ad for replacement workers, the corporation conceded that “conditions are dangerous and unpleasant.” But ATI didn’t tell prospective replacements that, just three months ago, executive vice president Bob Wetherbee said new hires would probably need at least an associate degree in engineering or electronics and two years of training because of the highly technical nature of the work.
The ATI ploy to sow jealousy in the community has failed. Community members routinely drop off cupcakes and soup at union halls and send pizzas to picket lines. Steelworkers picketing at mill gates report that 90 percent of community members passing by wave or honk horns in support. Community members have joined steelworkers on the picket lines.
Workers and spouses who gathered at the union hall in Brackenridge last week talked about financial stresses and fears ATI has caused. They said they’ve stopped spending. They don’t eat out. They dread bills piling up.
They also fear losing health insurance. Unlike former company president Bob Bozzone, who maintained workers’ health insurance during a labor dispute in 1994, current ATI management has expressed no concern at all about the well-being of ATI’s locked-out workers, cutting off the health benefits of 96 office and technical employees with minimal notice — a decision that the USW is challenging on many fronts.
With hard work and sweat, steelworkers have produced the specialty steel that has made profits for ATI. But the workers and the communities do much more. Brackenridge is a good example.
A decade ago, ATI began planning construction of a new hot-strip mill. Steelworkers, Brackenridge residents and Pennsylvania taxpayers all helped the corporation get it done. Steelworkers agreed to significant work-rule changes that ATI said it needed. Brackenridge, the school district, the county and the state all granted ATI massive tax abatements. And the state actually passed a law enabling ATI to secure special, lower electrical rates.
A half dozen years later, ATI has turned its back on all of those sacrifices by workers, communities and taxpayers.
Like the workers, shop owners in the communities around the mills are suffering. Some said the lockout has cost them 40 percent of their business. Still, many display signs supporting the steelworkers. Among them is Aby Shah, manager of the Express Food Mart in Brackenridge, who said he thought ATI managers failed to consider the effect of the lockout on the community.
Bill Hrivnak, whose bar, Ernie’s, is on Brackenridge Avenue a block from the mill, posted a handmade sign that says “No Scab Zone” because he doesn’t approve of ATI bringing in outsiders to take the jobs of community members.
The people are with the steelworkers. They long for ATI to resurrect Uncle AL.
Leo W. Gerard is international president of the United Steelworkers union.
First Published: September 7, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
