Nippon Steel’s Struggle Points to Uncertain Future of Pennsylvania Industry｜Arab News Japan

BRADDOCK: The proposed takeover of United States Steel by Nippon Steel is stirring unrest in Pittsburgh, where the metal once dominated the economy and still looms large in the collective memory.

Critics such as the United Steelworkers (USW) see the transaction as the latest threat in a years-long struggle to keep the industry alive after factories in the US rust belt were closed in the 1970s and 1980s.

“There’s so much history here and there’s a lot of pride that comes with it,” said USW’s Bernie Hall, a fourth-generation metalworker. “It wouldn’t be Western Pennsylvania without steel.”

In December, U.S. Steel struck a $14.9 billion deal to sell itself to Japan’s Nippon Steel, which has pledged investments to keep its Pennsylvania plants competitive with foreign producers and newer “mini-mills” in the American South that have a lower environmental impact.

But Hall, head of the USW’s Pennsylvania chapter, said the Japanese company had been evasive about specific plans for factories in the Pittsburgh region in an area called the Mon Valley, the oldest of which dates to 1875.

Both President Joe Biden and challenger Donald Trump have vowed to void the deal as the two compete for workers’ votes, putting the transaction in limbo, likely until at least after the November election.

These are the last remaining steel mills in the Pittsburgh region, just outside the city.

For most Americans, Pittsburgh remains virtually synonymous with steel, thanks in part to the fame of the American football team Pittsburgh Steelers.

But the complexion of a metropolis once known as the Smoky City changed fundamentally after the last factories closed in the 1980s.

Steel “is still part of our identity, but we are disconnected from that identity,” says former steelworker Edward Stankowski Jr., whose memoir “Memory of Steel” details how he and thousands of others left the industry in the early 1980s.

Stankowski, who grew up living in Pittsburgh overlooking the steel mills, got his start in the industry in the 1970s after graduating from high school. Many young men saw work as a ticket to the middle class, where they could trade hard work in a dangerous environment for a good salary and a solid pension.

The site where Stankowski’s factory once stood on Pittsburgh’s South Side has been repurposed as apartments called “Hot Metal Flats” and a restaurant, the Cheesecake Factory.

“I don’t miss it,” said Stankowski, who went to college after leaving the steel industry and is now a professor at the University of La Roche. “I like having clean air. I like having clean water.”

Steel was well suited to Western Pennsylvania, a region with waterways and an abundant supply of coal, but “there has been a fundamental, almost tectonic shift in the geography of steel,” says regional economist Chris Briem of the University of Pittsburgh.
The Mon Valley plants “have been around for a long time,” Briem said. “If they don’t get a lot of new investment, they probably won’t be competitive for much longer.”

Locals see it as a symbol that the US Steel tower in downtown has been renamed the UPMC Building, after the region’s largest employer, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Edgar Thomson’s Braddock plant, once owned by Andrew Carnegie, is one of three plants in Western Pennsylvania that US Steel operates along with a fourth plant in Eastern Pennsylvania in an operation known as “Mon Valley Works.”

Nippon has pledged to keep the factories open and invest $1.4 billion in USW-represented facilities through 2026, when the current labor contract expires. The company has also pledged to keep US Steel’s 1,000-employee office in downtown Pittsburgh.

“You can’t tell the story of U.S. Steel without Pennsylvania playing a leading role, and Nippon Steel will keep it that way,” Nippon Vice Chairman Takahiro Mori wrote in a June 9 op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Nippon has hinted that the chances of US approval could improve after November. Proponents of the transaction argue that US Steel could be broken up if the deal falls through, adding more uncertainty to US Steel’s 3,000 hourly workers in Pennsylvania.

But the USW says Nippon’s plans are vague and offer the company a way out in a recession.

“They say they’re going to invest in the factories,” Hall said. “What does that mean?”

Workers want a sign that whoever runs Mon Valley “is interested in running these plants for the long term and really investing in this community,” Hall said. “That’s exactly what they’re not hearing from Nippon or U.S. Steel.”

Some Mon Valley workers interviewed by AFP labeled the deal a cash grab by US Steel management and expressed fear about their jobs. But others are open to it.

Alex Barna, a machinist on the West Mifflin plan, described himself as “hesitant” as he weighs his hopes and concerns, and said of Nippon: “They could be in it for the long haul.”

AFP