—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Locked-out ATI workers: ‘Young or old, we’re in it together’

BAGDAD, Pa. — “Lockouts are the company’s weapon to break unions,” maintenance worker Adam Cook, 34, told the Militant at the picket shack outside the Allegheny Technologies Inc. steel mill here. “Hanging in there is what we can do, because the bosses’ motive in this lockout is to set a precedent for the industry.”

ATI locked out 2,200 United Steelworkers on Aug. 15. The company wants concessions that would slash health care for active, retired and future workers; institute 12-hour shifts; cut pension agreements for current and future workers; reduce wages and overtime pay; and contract out more work. The lockout takes place as 30,000 Steelworkers at ArcelorMittal and U.S. Steel also face concession demands and work with day-by-day extensions of the expired contract

“I volunteered for the strike and defense committee in the 1994 strike and it feels good to be here with these guys now,” said Ray Ausk, 59, a retired Bagdad worker. “ATI tries to set the public against us. They say everyone has to pay for health care. But this is not about health care, this is about unionbusting.”

“It’s a crime what ATI has in store for younger workers, a two-tier system and replacing pensions with 401(k),” said Jim Carroll, another veteran of the 1994 strike. “Young or old, we’re in this fight together.”

Before the lockout, “ATI held townhall meetings in the plant about the need for cuts,” said Alan Braden, 36, a USW safety coordinator at the mill and a coal miner’s son. “Meanwhile, they stockpiled their warehouses on our backs with forced overtime and 12-hour shifts. Safety went to the dogs. We’re not as strong as the miners were, but we are getting there. This lockout is changing us.”

“Working us 12- and 16-hour shifts for straight-time pay for three days in a row is ATI’s idea of the new 40-hour workweek,” said Cheryl Kanzic at the ATI plant in nearby Brackenridge, where several hundred took part in the expanded picket. “Then a contract worker works the next three days,” at a lower rate of pay. Kanzic and other female pickets are members of the union’s Women of Steel committee.

One picket sign read, “We got Zamboned.” ATI board of directors member David Morehouse is CEO of the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team. Zamboni is a brand of machine that resurfaces skating rinks.

“It took a monthlong fight for locked-out workers to get unemployment compensation,” said Terry Stinson, a utility technician at the Vandergrift plant. “One young worker with two weeks on the job didn’t qualify. But we give him the food gift cards we receive from the union’s Strike and Defense Fund. The majority of people are becoming more solid the longer this continues.”

— Arlene Rubinstein