U.S. Steel’s pledge to invest $1 billion in the Mon Valley Works was cheered on Thursday with multiple standing ovations by workers in orange coveralls and about a dozen politicians and local officials gathered on a stage erected in a cavernous industrial building in Braddock.
One after another, speakers strode to the podium and lauded the decision as a sign the American steel industry can be competitive and sustainable at the Edgar Thomson Works, the steel-producing section of the Mon Valley complex.
The Pittsburgh company’s plan to construct a new caster and rolling mill was intended as an emphatic answer to a question quietly posed in the Mon Valley as U.S. Steel struggled financially for several years and as smaller, more efficient mills were built in other states.
Could the Pittsburgh region’s last integrated steel mill, which dates to the 1870s, survive in the 21st century?
“This is the best news I’ve heard in 20 years (working at Edgar Thomson),” said Bob Williams Jr., standing next to his son, Bob Williams III, who works at the Clairton Coke Works. “This place has put food on my table and clothes on my back. With improvements like this, I know it going to continue for my grandsons.”
Now, the company faces a tall challenge in rolling out the new technology — the first of its kind in the United States — while building and maintaining a workforce to run it, steel industry experts said.
The announcement will not necessarily create any new jobs at the complex, which currently employs 3,000 people. And it could lead to losses, experts say.
Technology has long had a contentious relationship with the U.S. manufacturing workforce. New machines and processes have continually rearranged factories and made production lines dramatically more efficient.
While that lowers costs for companies and can make products cheaper, it creates a need to re-train workers and consolidate or eliminate jobs.
The United Steelworkers union, which represents roughly 15,000 workers employed at U.S. Steel, applauded the company’s announcement Thursday, calling it “much-needed job security” that “demonstrates a commitment to operate in the best interests of its employees.”
“This is pretty dramatic stuff,” said Tom Conway, international vice president for the union who chairs contract negotiations with U.S. Steel. “No one needs to tell us this is state of the art.”
Still, Mr. Conway noted the union would closely monitor the number of jobs at the plant and whether vacant positions were being filled.
“There’s gonna be a lot of training,” he said. “We’re not going to run from new technology here. We’re going to embrace it.”
At Thursday’s event — which attracted a few hundred people at the site of the future caster and rolling facility — the company showed a five-minute video featuring what it calls the “next generation of steelworkers.”
Part of the training puzzle will fall to Duquesne University President Ken Gormley, who said he has had early discussions with U.S. Steel President and CEO David Burritt on helping create a training pathway for steelworkers.
With a focus on the Mon Valley as part of the Uptown school’s strategic goals, Mr. Gormley said Duquesne University could assist through its business, ethics and sustainability curriculum — possibly to supplement trade school courses. Specifics, at the moment, are light.
“We’re committed to serving that community and the people there to help figure out how to make a transition in which folks in the Mon Valley have opportunities created by this new investment,” Mr. Gormley said in an interview.
Technology experts say the new combined casting and rolling facility will require significantly less energy and work-hours to operate and maintain — a big gain for U.S. Steel, which has seen a significant turnaround in business in the last year.
U.S. tariffs on foreign imports of steel, imposed by the Trump administration in March 2018, have given a boost to American steel companies, which have raced to plough their profits into developing technology and building new mills from scratch. U.S. Steel’s competitors, like Charlotte-based Nucor Corp. and Indiana-based Steel Dynamics Inc., have announced new plants that can operate at a lower cost.
“We’re done playing defense,” declared Mr. Burritt, onstage Thursday. “It’s time to start playing offense.”
The combination of casting and rolling could cut energy consumption in half and open up a new kind of steel production, said P. Chris Pistorius, a materials science professor and co-director of the Center For Iron and Steelmaking Research at Carnegie Mellon University.
In a conventional mill, liquid steel is cast, cooled to room temperature, then reheated again to go through a rolling mill.
The new facility “has a huge advantage because the steel never cools down to room temperature (and) that saves energy,” Mr. Pistorius said. “It’s quite a bold move of U.S. Steel to go for this endless continuous rolling type of facility.”
At the same time, the new facility will raise the stakes on accident prevention. In conventional mills, the time between casting and rolling can serve as a useful buffer in case there is a problem in the rolling mill.
At the new facility, “You essentially have no buffers,” Mr. Pistorius said. “It definitely relies on a very tight process control to make sure it’s running perfectly.”
Mr. Pistorius added that the consolidation of operations will almost certainly lead to job losses. “It is sure to be fewer people,” he said.
Asked whether combining the two processes would cut employment, U.S. Steel spokeswoman Meghan Cox wrote in an email, “We have hired several hundred people a year for the past several years and expect that to continue.”
Ultimately, the investment will serve as a test of whether steel-making jobs and a push for clean air in the Mon Valley will conflict.
U.S. Steel has faced months of public criticism over a Dec. 24 fire at the Clairton Coke Works that disabled pollution control equipment and caused sulfur dioxide emissions to exceed federal standards on 10 occasions.
Separately, the Allegheny County Health Department has imposed fines totaling more than $2.3 million in the last year for violations at the Clairton plant.
U.S. Steel, in addition to the casting and rolling facility, will construct a new cogeneration plant that will convert a portion of the coke oven gases into electricity powering the Mon Valley Works’ other facilities. The company expects to reduce emissions of particulate matter by about 60%, sulfur dioxide by about 50% and nitrogen oxides by about 80%.
On Thursday, environmental groups voiced some early skepticism that the cogeneration plant would reach air quality goals.
“Simply burning coke oven gas for electricity will not protect residents from the many pollution sources at the Clairton Coke Works,” said Myron Arnowitt, Pennsylvania director for Clean Water Action. “The long standing pollution problems from US Steel remain to be tackled.”
Earlier this week, PennEnvironment and the Clean Air Council sued U.S. Steel in federal court, claiming the company violated the Clean Air Act by continuing to operate the coke works and its Edgar Thomson and Irvin steel mills in Braddock and West Mifflin without adequately controlling emissions of sulfur dioxide and other coke oven gases.
Mr. Burritt, in an interview with media following the event, responded to questions about the fire by saying the company was focused on moving forward.
“We’re going to run this business as effectively as we can, in the safest and most environmentally friendly way we can,” he said. “This technology is going to take us to a new level.”
Daniel Moore: dmoore@post-gazette.com, 412-263-2743 and Twitter @PGdanielmoore
First Published: May 3, 2019, 12:28 p.m.
Updated: May 3, 2019, 12:31 p.m.
