EuroWire May 2015

Transatlantic Cable

idling plants and cutting sta as part of an ”ongoing adjustment” to accommodate for lower demand. Up to mid-March the company had laid o workers in Alabama, Texas, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota and Illinois – cutting a few thousand from its 23,000-strong workforce in North America. † In January, the steel giant announced it was closing its coke production operations in Granite City, Illinois, entailing a loss of 176 jobs. The largest business enterprise in the world when it launched in 1901 also temporarily idled one of the blast furnaces at Granite City. † The company said as well that it would idle its pipe manufacturing plant in Lorain, Ohio, and send home 614 workers – casualties, at least for an interval, of weak demand from the oil industry. † US Steel’s Keetac iron ore plant in Keewatin, Minnesota, was set for an open-ended closedown as of 13 th May, with the layo of as many as 412 workers who mined the ore burned in the blast furnaces of Northwest Indiana’s steel mills. A company spokeswoman told the Minneapolis/ St Paul Business Journal (12 th March), “We can’t speculate on the duration of the temporary idling.” † While US Steel said it would continue to produce iron ore pellets at its Minntac plant in Mountain Iron, Minnesota, a planned expansion of the Keetac plant was put on hold. † In its latest round of layo s in Northwest Indiana, US Steel on 12 th March let go 83 more workers at the Gary Works. All had worked at the sprawling mill, the company’s largest, for under six months. The layo s are permanent, a spokeswoman said of the probationary hires. With those cuts, US Steel had eliminated more than 780 jobs in Northwest Indiana to date. † An editorial (”Show More Spine to Fight Steel Dumping,” 15 th March) in the Northwest Indiana Times noted that more steel is produced in Indiana than anywhere else in the USA – a distinction that the state has held for 34 straight years. But over that period, nearly 50,000 steel jobs have disappeared from Northwest Indiana. In 2000 there were 26,700 steel jobs in the area, 39,900 fewer than in 1979; as of 2014, there were only 17,900 steel jobs. Through mid-March of 2015, another 1,000 steel jobs had been shed. Like the policy agenda of the American Iron and Steel Institute, the Times editorial makes the case for laws that strengthen tari enforcement and trade agreements that recognise the needs of the home-grown industry.

Steel

The US Steel workforce is feeling the company’s pain, aggravated by the

inexpensive Chinese steel on o er worldwide In an article led from Hong Kong and generated there and in Pittsburgh and Beijing, the Wall Street Journal took notice of calls in the USA and Europe for tari s on the excess products – sold abroad – of China’s steel mills. Here are the main takeaways from the WSJ piece (“Why Chinese Steel Exports Are Stirring Protests,” 15 th March): † “China’s massive steelmaking engine, determined to keep humming as growth cools at home, is ooding the world with exports, spurring steel producers around the globe to seek government protection from falling prices. † “From the European Union to Korea and India, China’s excess metal supply is upending trade patterns and heating up turf battles among local steelmakers. † “In the US, the world’s second-biggest steel consumer, a fresh wave of layo s is fuelling appeals for tari s. US steel producers such as US Steel Corp and Nucor Corp are starting to seek political support for trade action.” So China’s steel mills have stayed in high gear even as its economy is cooling. In her review of the WSJ piece, Lydia DePillis, a labour and business reporter for the Washington Post , suggested that it contains a lesson in how the global economy works in sometimes unexpected ways. The example she chose is the e ect the inexpensive Chinese steel ooding the world is having on one group of American workers – those employed by US Steel Corp of Pittsburgh. (“US Steel Plants Are on a Layo Spree,” 16 th March) US Steel’s ‘pink-slip spree’ Imports of steel into the USA have been on the rise for years now, going up 68 per cent in 2014 alone and contributing to a long decline in industry employment. A surging dollar and plunging energy prices have worsened the situation. Now, wrote Ms DePillis, “With consumption slowing in China, real downsizing has begun.” The 13 th -largest steel producer in the world, US Steel has been on what the Washington Post reporter calls a pink-slip spree,

Image: www.bigstockphoto.com Photographer Zsolt Ercsel

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May 2015