Playing with fire

摘要

The United Steelworkers are making a major strategic error in the way they are handling their dispute with LTV over Trico. LTV owns 50 percent of the Alabama minimill, which will start up early next year. Trico's 320 employees will produce 2.2 million tons of hot band for the market in the Southeast-the fastest-growing U.S. market for steel consumption, a market LTV sells little to now. LTV "started a war against [union] members" by "this contemptuous plot," USWA Secretary/Treasurer Leo Gerard told LTV shareholders at the company's annual meeting in Cleveland in mid-April. About 1,000 USWA members filled the auditorium, overflow room, and street outside to protest Trico and to jeer LTV Chairman David Hoag and President Pete Kelly. Trico's 320 workers will steal jobs from the 11,000 union-represented workers at LTV's present plants, which produce 8 million tons a year, the union says. LTV is "destroying" the partnership the union and management agreed to in their 1994 contract, says USWA President George Becker (interview, this issue). Until the Trico dispute is settled, the union will not participate with LTV in joint partnership programs, Gerard said.