BY TONY DUTROW

WHEELING, West Virginia - "We're fired up, can't take it no more!" and "No Contract, No Peace" echoed through downtown here November 13. Several hundred strikers lined both sides of Market St. chanting, holding up signs, and marching in front of the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel corporate headquarters.

The unionists mobilized to express their outrage at the decision of Wheeling-Pitt bosses to cancel a bonus to pensioners' widows due in November. Some 4,500 members of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) began their strike at eight of the company's facilities October l.

According to the November 14 Charleston Gazette, payments of between $600 and $1000 were to be paid in November as part of the last contract, for widows who receive less than the minimum pension.

One ad run by Wheeling-Pitt in the Wheeling Intelligencer on the day of the rally in bold lines said "Responsibility for any pain or hardship experienced by widows or widowers rests squarely on the shoulders of the USWA negotiators who walked our employees off their jobs."

The lunch-hour rally forced the company executives to order out. Strikers booed as a delivery truck driver waded through the protest with a tall stack of pizzas. A picket from the Yorkville local carried a hand-lettered sign "We may howl, we may growl, but damn it, we won't beg."

WHX, the steelmaker's parent company, purchased Wheeling- Downs, a popular and profitable dog racing track. Strikers have adopted a "union" racing dog as one of the symbols of their fight.

Jerry Adams, a worker at the Beechbottom mill for 30 years, thought actions like this strengthen the fight. "The company is poised to break the union, that's clear to everybody, and when they break the union, they've broken us all," he said.

One of the largest contingents to the protest came in two busloads from Allen Port, Pennsylvania, to join strikers from the Ohio and West Virginia mills.

Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel has refused to reopen negotiations since it presented the union with its "final offer," which omitted any reference to the union's proposals on pension rights.

According to the November 9 Pittsburgh Post Gazette, since the strike began, WHX shares have lost twenty-one percent of their value.

As the company pleads poverty, it sits on a $406 million nest egg. Meanwhile, the bosses have launched a massive media campaign against the main demands of the strike. Full-page company ads appear in papers as far south as Uniontown, Pennsylvania, as well as in the Wheeling and Steubenville, Ohio, area.

The airwaves are flooded with slick commercial spots blaming the union's "unreasonable" demands and attacking the workers' goal of winning the pre-l985 bankruptcy pension plan. This plan includes a "30 years and out" provision and a $40 pension per year of service worked, close to the level won by steelworkers in the rest of the unionized integrated steel mills.  
 
 
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