Evolution of Maintenance Work at Inland Steel

Inland Steel: Paternalism to Globalism
Evolution of the Organization of Maintenance
Work at a U.S. Basic Steel Facility
By Mike Olszanski

Paper for L515 Work Restructuring
Indiana University Northwest
Fall, 2007

Olszanski 1

Thesis
This analysis of an Indiana Harbor, Indiana integrated basic steel mill aims
to shed light on the evolution of the organization (and reorganization) of work in
the U.S. steel industry over the last century. From a family run, single plant
operation to a cog in the global wheel of trans-national steel giant Arcelor/Mittal,
the Inland Steel facility on Lake Michigan has seen the implementation of many if
not most of the various theories of work organization over the one hundred plus
years of its operation. As a union shop from its earliest days, the Inland mill was
the home of the largest, most independent and one of the most militant locals in
the United Steelworkers of America (USWA, now the USW) Local 1010—often
called “The Red Local.”1 Though Inland was in some ways unique—a one-plant,
family-run operation with an independent, militant Local Union adversary for
many years, it is in many ways typical of the large vertically-integrated basic steel
operation that dominated U.S., and for many years world steel production during
the 20th century.
My analysis here utilizes the perspective gained in 33 years experience as a
maintenance electrician at Inland steel and 20+ years as a union activist. I have
focused on the work I have done and know best at Inland—maintenance. I was an
electrician (Motor Inspector, Technician, later Inspector) in the #3 Cold Strip Mill
for 31 consecutive years, from 1966 to 1998. From 1970 until 1998, I also served
as an elected local union representative in various capacities, including Griever
Steward, Executive Board (12 years) Vice President and President. I was also
chair of the first Environmental Committee at Local 1010 and an elected delegate
to every biennial USWA Constitutional Convention from 1976 until the local
stopped electing delegates in the early 1990’s.

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I witnessed the end of the era of the internal labor market at Inland, and
several stages of the reorganization of the work force. Changes in the maintenance
department mirrored to some extent the work changes implemented throughout the
mill, and the industry, and furnish specific examples of work restructuring at
Inland.
Work restructuring produced dramatic productivity gains at Inland Steel,
specifically in the 1980’s and 1990’s. A central fact emerging from this research is
that while steel capacity, production and sales rose, peaked and then leveled off
around 1980, the number of workers producing steel at this facility dropped to less
than ¼ of its former number.
As this analysis will show, Local 1010, from the organizing days of the
1930's a militant, independent minded and left led local, was brought into line by
USWA leadership in the 1950’s cold war red purge, experienced a brief resurgence
as a leader of the Fight Back in the mid 1960’s and again in the 1970’s and 1980’s,
but since 1988 was once again brought under the control of a largely
collaborationist USW International leadership, which has lacked the ideology or
the will to contest management’s drive to downsize the workforce and intensify the
work. Thus a factor of some consequence in the rationalization, or what might
more accurately be called destruction of the work force at the mill considered here
is the union response, or more accurately lack of response to management’s
restructuring of work. By accepting without challenge the principles of
downsizing the workforce through "attrition" and reorganizing work through the
"team" concept, the union assured a dwindling membership in basic steel and a
consequent reduction in its own power.

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In addition, the abrogation by the steel companies of the earlier wages/productivity
bargain meant the stagnation of real wages in basic steel, though productivity
increased several fold from the 1950's to the 1990's. And with the rejection of any
kind of working class ideology, shorter hours as an antidote to unemployment was
swept aside as an important goal in collective bargaining. Thus the huge
productivity gains in steel in this country of the past half century were largely
gobbled up by hungry capitalists, rather than being distributed in any meaningful
way among the workers who produced them.2
While work restructuring has accelerated in today’s “global” economy, the
basis for management attempts to wring more surplus value out of the workers is
as old as capitalism itself, and strategies employed by today’s capitalists hark back
to the days of Adam Smith, and certainly were understood by Karl Marx and V.I.
Lenin, as well as more recent political economists like Harry Braverman. That
union leaders knew, or should have known that much of this was coming fifty
years ago goes without saying. That their self-imprisonment within the ideological
orthodoxy of capitalism as an “end of history” prevented an effective response to
capital’s newly aggressive global neo-liberal assault on workers is understood by a
few serious observers like Braverman, Alan Howard and others. How many
workers and local leaders understand how and why restructuring has been and
continues to be done is impossible to know. One can only work to raise
consciousness whenever and in whatever manner is possible.

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History , Philosophy, Myth

On October 30th 1893, a year after Andrew Carnegie and his henchman Frick
had beaten the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA) at the
infamous Homestead Steel Strike, Inland Steel Company was incorporated.
Perhaps encouraged and emboldened by the crushing defeat of the AA in
Pennsylvania, Inland founder Joseph Block put up the initial investment, and
Joseph E. Porter was the company’s first president. Block, who had amassed his
initial capital in the used railroad equipment business, installed old steam boilers
and a well-used engine from the defunct Chicago Steel Works at its new Chicago
Heights, Illinois Plant and Inland began converting scrap steel rails into farm
implements the following year—the same year the City of East Chicago, Indiana
was chartered. The Heights plant employed 300.
In 1901, the Lake Michigan Land Company, in order to stimulate local
business, gave Inland 50 acres in East Chicago, Indiana to build a steel mill. By
1902, the sprawling Indiana Harbor Works on Lake Michigan was pouring steel
ingots, and in 1907 “Madeline” #1 blast furnace (named after Joe Block’s
daughter) poured the first pig iron in Indiana.3 Rather than pay construction
workers on the blast furnace the prevailing wage, Inland built them a bunkhouse
and hired a cook. Paternalism started early at Inland. By World War I (1918)
Inland employed over 5,000, had produced a million tons of steel and was worth
$57 million.4 Unique among U.S. steel mills, Inland would remain a Block family
controlled company with one huge integrated basic steel mill at East Chicago and
continue the old frugal habit of buying used and obsolete equipment for its mills on
the cheap, for a hundred years. Also unique in its sales approach, Inland cultivated

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small, specialty customers largely overlooked by the giants U.S. Steel, Bethlehem
and the others, and boasted for many years that no order was too small
to fill in an expedited manner. Inland’s loyal customer base would reciprocate,
seeing it through the depression of the 1930’s in fine shape.
Advocates of management science and the nascent human relations school
of personnel management, the paternalistic Blocks were employing corporate
welfare plans early on. A company doctor and on site emergency room tended to
mill casualties from 1908 and Inland instituted its own safety department,
awarding gold watches for safety suggestions. There was a Company relief and
insurance plan and a company picnic was instituted in 1910, the Inland Fellowship
Club to “assist the unemployed” in 1914, a Christmas bonus in 1915 and a profit
sharing and pension plan in 1919. U.S. Steel, employing welfare capitalism under
the so-called “American Plan”—designed to keep out unions—had established
company paid pensions for its employees in 1911.5 Inland built employee housing
as early as 1906, and the 100 home Sunnyside subdivision for supervisors in 1920.6
Jack Morris and other Inland historians have argued that the Block family’s Jewish
religion motivated them to treat their employees well, but I can find no evidence
that working conditions at Inland were at any time superior to those at its
competitors.7 In fact, when I sat on the 1977 Local 1010 negotiating committee, I
found that Inland employees were well behind Bethlehem, U.S Steel and others in
terms of local working conditions. Employees of Inland’s competitors for years
enjoyed pay for apprentices time in school, personal tools paid for by the company,
and larger overtime meal tickets. Thus 1977 contract negotiations, and the
revelations of Inland’s penny-pinching management considerably eroded the myth
of Inland as a better or more compassionate employer than the rest. Years later,

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when I interviewed fellow maintenance employees, they were split on the question
of whether the workers had it better when the Blocks ran Inland.
In any event, paternalism apparently did not satisfy the exploited and
overworked employees of Inland Steel. The AFL’s AA organized Lodge 56 at
Inland prior to the 1919 steel strike. To try to break the strike, organized by
William Z. Foster of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) William Z. Foster
Inland brought in Mexicans from the Texas border area. The strike was lost and
the Lodge survived but was weak and ineffective. Inland launched an Employee
Representation Plan (ERP) or Company Union, but in June 1936 AA members and
the majority of the hourly workers joined the Congress on Industrial Organization
(CIO) newly formed Steelworkers Organizing Committee (SWOC) becoming
SWOC Lodge 1010. At Lodge1010 “All members were organizers’” as Bill
Young put it.8 Forty years later union veteran Young described the feeling at
1010 when SWOC launched the first strike for union recognition against “Little
Steel” including Inland: “…after years of meeting secretly in the basement of an
undertaker…the day of salvation came…when we walked out of the mill.”9
In 1926, the harbor Works was electrified, under the direction of electrical
engineer Wilfred Sykes, who was made president in 1941. In 1928, Cleveland
financier Cyrus Eaton tried to combine Inland and Youngstown Sheet & Tube to
challenge the corporate dominance of U.S. Steel. The deal failed.10
In 1935, Inland broke a then standing rule among steelmakers by
"integrating downward"—acquiring Joseph T. Ryerson & Son steel service center
which stocked, warehoused and sold steel products. Quick delivery of small orders
made Inland/Ryerson the supplier of choice for small customers, who kept Inland
afloat during the great depression of the 1930's, when other steel producers

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foundered.11 Inland in fact invested millions in new hot and cold rolling sheet
mills during the 1930's, including new 76" and 44" hot strip mills, 72" and 44" cold
strip mills, annealing and pickling facilities. The expansion and modernization was
directed by Sykes, who anticipated the "lean and mean" concept of work
organization by 50 years: "I like breaking in a new plant in a depression," he said.
"There's nothing like it to whip your organization into shape."12 During the
depression years the Blocks claimed that "Every effort was made to provide
employment for as many of our men as possible," though wages were cut 10% in
1931. The jointly funded "Good Fellowship Club" helped laid-off Inlanders "in
distress," thus establishing the long-lasting myth of the extended Inland "family."13
By December of 1941, Inland was producing 3.5 million tons per year of raw steel
with 14,000 employees.
With the onset of World War II, the U.S. government built two 1,200 ton
Blast Furnaces (Madeline A & B) and two coke batteries on Inland property—
owned by the Federal Government but operated by Inland. This was to increase
steelmaking capacity to feed the Allied production of war materiel—particularly
tanks built across the canal at the Cast Armour plant. After the war these were
turned over to Inland free and clear. Inland also acquired the Cast Armour plant,
which became Inland Plant #4. A kind of corporate welfare was thus exploited by
Inland management to profit greatly from WWII.14
It was 1946—after the war—before Inland replaced wheelbarrows with
mechanized payloaders and forklifts and Inland still utilized steam engines until
1958, according to Morris.15 Though Michael Tennebaum, later an Inland
president, had patents on the phenomenally more efficient and productive basic
oxygen furnace (BOF)16 steelmaking process in the 1950's, Inland built the last

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open hearth furnace in the country in the 1950's—once again employing obsolete
technology in the face of the global modernization of steelmaking. It was during
the 1950's and 1960's that the Japanese industrial dynamo would build its huge
modern steel mills and begin to outstrip U.S productivity by leaps and bounds.
Inland's first BOF was completed in 1966, its second in 1973. The "heat" (batch) of
steel that took six or eight hours to make in an open hearth, is produced in 50
minutes in a BOF. Its first continuous caster started up in 1972, well behind most
of the industry. Number 3 Open Hearth shop would close in 1986, one of the last in
the country, featured in the Jean Shepard film, “The Phantom of the Open Hearth.17
1978-1979 were banner years as Inland produced 8.6 million tons and
shipped 6.2 million in a year, while employment peaked at over 25,000 at the
Harbor Works. But management was already complaining about Japanese
steelworkers' productivity beating ours by a large margin. While Inland would
finally begin to modernize, it would be intensification of work that would drive the
turn around of those statistics in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
In 1980, Inland built the largest blast furnace in the world, #7, on 750 acres
of Lake Michigan land fill. Using slag and waste from steelmaking, thrifty Inland
had extended its property far out into Lake Michigan, creating its own land for
expansion. In September of 1996, #7 set a North American iron production record,
pouring nearly 308,000 tons for the month. It produced 3.7 million tons of iron in
1997. With state-of-the-art technology as well as economy of scale, it would
produce enormously more iron with fewer workers than any of the older blast
furnaces still in operation—9,500 tons per day, or as much in an hour as Madeline
#1 produced in a day. The department’s union workers, led by leftist griever Joe
Frantz would file grievances and launch a publicity campaign to try to win an

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incentive rate increase that might at least distribute a little of the gains to the
workers. Ironically, in a couple of years, Joe left Inland when he, and several
hundred more electricians were laid off.18
Part of the myth of the extended Inland "family" persisted for many years,
especially among management—types, though the passing of top management
from the hands of the Blocks to those of professional head-hunters like the golden-
parachutist Sandy Nelson, and the purging of management and supervisory ranks
in the “Organizing for Excellence” (OE) manpower reduction campaign of the
1980’s disabused most supervisors of their illusions about their place in the Inland
“family.” The revocation by management of ISC Procedure No. 151.1, which
contained a “salaried employment continuity provision——a promise of job
security ‘in the wake of the Accelerating Total Quality (ATQ) work—reduction
initiative.’” of the 1990’s—sent new shock waves through the ranks of supervision.
Explaining that “Employment continuity isn’t consistent with that requirement [to
cut costs] because no possibility can be overlooked if Inland is to achieve world—
class performance levels,”19 Inland renewed its commitment to downsizing the
ranks of supervision while dramatically illustrating the worthlessness of its
promises. From a peak of nearly 19,000 in 1979, Local 1010’s membership would
fall to under 9,000 before the end of the 1990’s.20

In 1996 Inland Steel Industries Chairman Bob Darnall cited the importance
of Inland people in assuring the company’s success, and lauded us for
improvements in performance, while in the same breath he warned of more
downsizing, saying “the company has to look at all the options, including reduction
of the workforce.”21 It had been different under the Blocks, or at least it had
seemed so, according to 32 year Inland veteran Electrical Technician Greg Saboff:

Olszanski 10

The Christmas parties and picnics. As a child I remember going to those
and looking forward to working at Inland Steel. For our family it was:
Number 1, the U.SA; Number 2, Inland; Number 3, wife and children --in
that order. When I started I had that family feeling about it, instead of that
cold, cruel industrial complex that it is today. The Blocks, or whoever was
running their P.R. did that.22

Thirty year electrical inspector Ernest Hardin agreed:

There was a humanitarian trait about the Blocks which is no longer here.
These days, they piss in your face and try to tell you its rain,23

Also in agreement was Steve Ruschak, Electrical Technician with 38 years service:
“The Blocks believed in a little bit of employer-to-employee loyalty.”24 By 1996,
Inland’s philosophy according to 27 year mechanic Art Lorenzen was to
“demoralize and eliminate workers.”25 “They apply true Taylorism,” said 25 year
mechanical Inspector Marty Popagain, “…decentralize and demoralize. They
appear to have no long term goals—everything is short term.”26 Janitor Efus
Zeman, who’d been at Inland over forty years claimed the philosophy at Inland
hadn’t changed: “ Nothing’s new, here. It’s always been the almighty dollar. They
never cared about the people.” 27

The work culture at Inland had clearly changed by the 1980’s. Charlie Page,
with whom I worked for twenty years, retired at age 49, with thirty years service.
“I’d have stayed longer,” he told me on his last day, “but it just isn’t any fun any
more.” 28

“I just hate coming to work any more,” is the way 27 year Electrician Jack
Tauber put it, “every day they’re changing things—for the worse.” Jack has a
special reason to resent Inland’s cost cutting philosophy. In 1983, management

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notified 222 bargaining unit (union) employees, who had already scheduled their
once in five years thirteen weeks vacation (arguably the best benefit The USWA
ever negotiated) that they had recalculated their entitlement date, and they would
not in fact qualify for their thirteen week vacation. Jack was one of them. He had
already made plans and bought tickets for the best vacation of his life. He never
got it. In 1983 contract negotiations, Inland demanded and got wage and benefit
concessions from the USWA, for the first time in history. The thirteen week
vacation was one of them.29 That same year, steelmaking capacity at Harbor
Works was cut 30% (about 2.7 million tons/year) by shutting down older
equipment. But the remaining 6.3 million tons per year would be more fully
utilized, and the IN Tek and IN Kote joint ventures starting in 1989 would add
back 1.5 million tons/year of very high value-added sheet and galvanized strip
steel, made with incredibly small crews of workers utilizing the very latest
technology. 30

As was mentioned Inland employed 25,460 in 1979, of whom almost 19,000
were members of (USWA) Local 1010—the largest local in steel. By 1993, they
had cut the workforce in half, and were shipping 4.8 million tons of higher value
specialty steels, with greatly improved "prime yield" and much less waste.31 In
1995, Inland shut down the 100 year old 100” Plate Mill, and shipped it off to a
museum. The relic had run continuously all those years, with only brief downtime
to replace the huge manila ropes that coupled it’s ancient wound rotor electric
motor to the mill. A main duty of the Motor Room Tender (electrician) assigned to
the mill for all of those years was to pour 50 pound bags of potash into a huge “slip
tank” filled with a potash & water solution that functioned as an enormous resistor
controlling the speed of the 1890’s vintage AC motor.

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And as CEO Bob Darnell said in 1996, the work force cuts were far from
over. Through its maintenance program, “IMPACT” recommended by consultants
Fluor Daniels, who charged Inland millions to apply Taylorist time study methods
to maintenance mechanics and electricians, Inland hoped that “…through attrition
the company can reduce its craft workforce” still further, “to levels that are
competitive with other steelmakers.”32

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Work Organization at Inland Steel: 1940’s to 1980’s
An integrated basic steel mill like Inland brings in iron ore, limestone and
coal at one end, and ships finished steel plate, structural shapes, cold rolled
(sometimes galvanized or tin-plated) strip, and other specialized steel products out
the other end. In Inland’s case, as in Ford’s, vertical integration extended beyond
iron and steelmaking proper, as the Blocks acquired a fleet of Lake Michigan
shipping vessels, its own iron ore mines in Minnesota, and coal mines in Southern
Illinois. Inland Ryerson in Chicago warehoused and shipped finished steel
products.
At the Harbor Works, between 25 and 31 Departments, from the Coke Plants
and Blast furnaces where iron was produced, to the Open Hearths (later more
efficient Basic Oxygen Furnaces) where it was turned into steel, to the Electric
Furnace and Structural (Bar and Shape) Rolling Mills, to the Hot Rolling and Cold
Rolling Sheet Mills where the steel was finished were manned by employees
whose seniority rights were for many years tied to their departments.33 Within
departments, seniority sequences tied workers to a craft or production job ladder.
This departmental seniority was used effectively by management to maintain both
a racial and a sexual division of labor in the company. In order to transfer from
one department to another, an employee would forfeit any sequence and
departmental seniority she34 had accrued, and basically have to start at the bottom
of the sequence seniority ladder. This discriminatory seniority system was
codified in the Collective Bargaining Agreements negotiated with the USWA. 35 It
was well known that the hot, dirty departments like the coke ovens were manned
primarily by African Americans, the track gangs were mostly Mexicans, and the
relatively clean finishing mills were almost all white. When white women were

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hired during World war II, most of them went to the Tin Mill—a fairly decent
department, relatively.
When I first hired at Inland's Blast Furnace in 1963, the electrical sequence
consisted of Helper, Motor Inspector 2nd Class, Motor Inspector Standard and
Leader. One learned the craft on the job, and promotions were basically by
sequence seniority. The Helper job, which consisted largely of changing light bulbs
and repairing light fixtures throughout the department, was also known as Lamp
Trimmer, a throwback to the days of kerosene lanterns. An apprenticeship was
established in the mid 1960's, with Inland and the USWA not in agreement over
testing for promotion. Training for apprentices would be largely financed by the
Federal Government through the Manpower Development and Training Act of
1962 (MDTA). Once again, Inland management proved itself not above taking
government assistance, even in times when profits were good. 36
The #3 Cold Strip Electrical sequence, where I worked from 1966 until I
retired, employed Motor Inspector Standards (MI’s, job class 18) Mill Electrical
Control Operators (MECO’s, job class 20) and Electrical Technicians (ET’s, job
class 24). The apprenticeship agreed to with the USWA in the mid-1960’s added
seven more steps to the electrical craft, Vocational Motor Inspector (VMI) VII
through I (7 through 1) with lesser job classes and lesser pay. VMI’s were required
to complete 2 years (four semesters) of the Purdue/Inland Electrical Training
program, where classes were run at Purdue University Calumet Campus mornings
and evenings to allow for swing shifts. The program was modeled on Purdue’s
Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) major, and gave the apprentices
practically the equivalent of an Associate’s Degree in EET. As mentioned,
government funding helped pay the bill. In addition to maintaining a passing grade

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at Purdue, VMI’s took a step test every six months in order to promote to the next
level. A third year of the Purdue/Inland program, concentrating in electronics, was
added for training of MECO’s and Technicians, who were promoted based on
written tests, seniority, and openings.
An expansion was underway in #3 Cold Strip Mill in the mid 1960's,
including a new Temper Mill, hot dip Galvanize Line, Shear Line, Recoil Line and
Anneal. The electrical sequence doubled in size to keep pace. In practice, when I
hired into the department in 1966, Technicians were long service employees with
the most training, experience and ability, and acted as “crew leaders.” They seldom
left the motor room (electrical control house), issuing line-ups to the MECO’s,
MI’s and VMI’s and answering trouble calls only of the most technical nature
when called to assist the others. MECO’s were, in an older parlance “Motor Room
Tenders” who also stayed in the motor rooms watching the operation of electrical
equipment unless called to assist the MI’s and VMI’s. VMI’s were sent to answer
trouble calls first, and called for help from MI’s when they needed it. From
climbing long flights of stairs to service overhead cranes, to searching for broken
wires in slimy, muck-filled basements, VMI’s did the nasty work. Though the
newest and usually youngest employees got the dirtiest, hardest jobs, we could
always look forward to promotions, and with them, higher wages and easier,
cleaner (though technically more challenging) work. “Seniority,” as I once told a
new-hire, “looks better and better the longer you stay in the mill.” Part of the
implicit “bargain” offered Electricians (as well as other crafts and production
workers) by Inland in these years was, do the hard, dirty work for low pay now,
learn the craft, and you will be rewarded in your later years. Technicians typically
stayed well past the 30 year retirement age, many well past 40 years service.

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Inland’s Internal Job Market

Driving into work at Inland on Cline Avenue sometime in the late 1980’s, I
was stunned by a billboard, declaring something like, “Join Inland Steel: A Job For
Life.” The advertisement was stunning because by that time it was an anachronism
—something from out of the forties or fifties or sixties. Inland implemented its
internal job market before the first contract was signed with the union. By the time
I went to work in the mill in 1963, the implied bargain described by Stone, Kerr, et
al was a tradition: lifetime job security and a pension in return for thirty years or
more of loyalty to the company.37 The bargain was in fact codified in the
Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between Inland (and in fact all the basic
steel companies) and the USWA. Pay grades were based on a job ladder clearly
spelled out in a Manual of Job Descriptions and Classifications mutually agreed
upon by the company and the union. Seniority promotional sequences assured that
over and above consideration of various qualifications like education, training
and/or ability, length of service was the primary determining factor in moving up
on the job. During my 33 years at Inland, I saw the Company strive to erode the
primacy of length of service, and the union struggle—albeit sometimes half-
heartedly—to maintain it. The bargain with the employees had at some point in
time become increasingly seen by management as an unwanted and unneeded
burden in its drive to become more competitive in a global steel market. And
Inland’s bargain with the USWA—increasing productivity and industrial peace for
union recognition and increasing wages and benefits—was increasingly seen as
unnecessary as the union, and the labor movement of the USA got smaller and
weaker. By the 1980’s, when some out-of-touch publicist had the out-of-date
recruiting billboard erected, Inland was “rationalizing” “downsizing” seeking wage

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concessions from the union for the first time since the inception of collective
bargaining, and certainly not hiring except perhaps some electricians needed to
replace those few too many let go in its overambitious and overreaching drive to
achieve absolute minimum maintenance crew size. The apprenticeship plan was
terminated in 1983. They had cut the maintenance work force a bit too deeply, and
needed to hire from the street perhaps a hundred or so. A similarly out-of-touch
publisher lauded Inland Steel as one of the 100 best employers to work for in 1984,
when downsizing was eliminating supervision as well as bargaining unit (union)
jobs at an ever-increasing rate.38
Incentive pay plans, based on tonnage produced by a unit (an individual
rolling mill, furnace, or department) were negotiated with the union, beginning in
the 1940’s. Three full time local union officers dealt specifically with the
adjustment and enforcement of job descriptions and classifications, base rates and
incentives throughout the Harbor Works. The Job Description and Classification
Manual was a long and detailed document. It spelled out in minute detail the
specific criteria, such as training, education, physical difficulty, environmental
factors like heat, etc., that were used to determine the pay grade attached to a job,
and it relative position on the job ladder. More radical union members and officers
of the local over the years—myself included—insisted the incentive plans had
always benefited the company more than the employees, though the union
struggled to police the incentive plans and minimize company abuses. Impasses
over incentive disputes sometimes resulted in “frozen” plans, sometimes to the
benefit of certain groups of employees, more often to the detriment of other
groups. While operating personnel were on “direct” incentive plans, with higher
rates, maintenance people, because our work did not directly influence output

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tonnage, were on “indirect” plans at considerably lower rates. The #3 Cold Strip
Maintenance employees (electrical and mechanical) were on an incentive plan that
had been frozen at around 10% (a very low rate, relative to that paid to production
and other maintenance employees) for the 31 years I worked there, due to an
unresolved dispute with the union. Such a low percentage rate, especially when
frozen, no longer functioned in any meaningful way to motivate maintenance
workers.
Inland always had its share of “rate busters” and “speed kings”. Attempts to
cut crews on high incentive production units often induced soldiering on the part of
many employees, but rate busters divided groups and prevented organized slow
downs from being effective. Of course slow-downs and work stoppages of any
kind have been expressly forbidden in all USWA contracts from the 1940’s on, and
union representatives are responsible contractually to take affirmative action to
prevent such job actions. From the 1970’s on the company cut crews relentlessly.

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Union Response: 1010, The Red Local

From its birth in SWOC days, Lodge (later Local) 1010 was organized and
largely led by leftists—primarily old Socialist Party, Trotskyist, and Communist
Party followers. As Needleman points out, it was “During these years of contract
limbo, Local 1010 gained its reputation as the most militant local, ‘the red local,’
the anti-international local.”39 The local acquired the tag “the red local” early on,
and it stuck throughout the 40’s and 50’s. This meant a constant tension between
the local and USWA District 31 and International leadership. It also meant that if
there was to be a fight-back against the increasingly dramatic speed up, job
intensification, automation and job elimination practiced by the U.S. steel industry,
much of it would be centered at Inland steel, where the battle lines were drawn
between management and the red local.
Both before and after the USWA negotiated contracts with Inland,
workers and rank & file local union leaders employed direct shop floor action
to settle issues. During the 1940’s Philip Nyden describes an ethos in which,
“The men thought nothing of stopping work and letting gondolas full of
molten metal hang in mid air. In these situations, the rapidly approaching
danger that [the molten metal would solidify and] production would be
interrupted …acted as a time clock forcing the company to bargain with the
workers [and settle departmental grievances].”40 Yale scholar Will
Tanzman, quoting Nyden, describes this strategy as “ ‘instant strike
bargaining’ negotiating with the threat of instant, small scale wildcat
strikes.”41
But in 1947, the USWA under Murray and District 31 Director Joe
Germano put an end to wildcats at Inland. When Tin Mill workers struck

Olszanski 20

over grievances, in violation of the contractual no-strike pledge, Inland fired
them all, with the full concurrence of the USWA International. The cold war
and the USWA’s purge of militants and “reds” was underway. From 1953 to
1964, conservative administrations brought 1010 firmly into the International
leadership’s camp, and the Local’s independence and militancy were
brought in check. 42 Nationally, the USWA would call strikes repeatedly
during the 1950’s to gain wage and benefit increases including defined benefit
pensions and medical insurance, but Local 1010 and the rest of the union’s
locals and rank & file members would serve mainly as foot soldiers, with
little input into the strategies employed or the long-term goals sought by the
union. The last industry-wide strike in steel, in 1959, staved off company
attempts to eliminate Article 2 Section 2 of the Inland CBA (2-B in the U.S.
Steel Contract) that protected local working conditions or “past practice.”
This language was later weakened, and in any event proved to be ineffective
in protecting crew sizes and preventing the combination and elimination of
jobs.
In the Blast Furnace in the 1960’s supporters of 1010 president and
accused Communist John Sargent, head of the Rank & File Caucus at 1010,
jokingly called each other “comrade” in the face of severe red-baiting of
Sargent and the Rank & File. Opponents advised me to steer clear of the
“commies.” A 1965 Local 1010 contract negotiating committee headed by
president Sargent and Grievance Chair Jim Balanoff refused to sign the CBA
approved by the USWA International. It went into effect just the same.43

Olszanski 21

By 1971, I had joined the Rank & File Caucus, then led by Grievance Chair
Jim Balanoff. I was elected to the Local 1010 Executive Board in 1976, when
Balanoff’s Rank& File swept the election. The Balanoff administration
effectively ended the second nearly ten year collaboration between 1010
administrations, the USWA International, and Inland. The 1977 contract
negotiations, which for the first time included a right to strike (on local issues only)
went down to the wire, including a strike authorization vote. Negotiated by a
largely neophyte but militant 1010 committee including Jim Robinson, Mike Mezo
and James Ross, the Local Agreement signed in 1977 was printed in a separate
booklet and distributed to every Local Union member. It contained significant,
though essentially non-monetary improvements in local working conditions.
Inland, as well as USWA International domination, was once again being
challenged by Local 1010’s leadership.
When Balanoff was elected Director of District 31, Vice President Bill
Andrews became the first African American president of the local. Inexperienced
but quick to learn, Andrews at first enjoyed the strong support and advice of
Balanoff, as well as a cadre of experienced and militant trade unionists.
During these years, there was little concern that Inland would “move”—you
don’t just pick up a blast furnace and move it to Mexico or Taiwan. And since
Inland had only one huge basic steel facility, they could not make money if it were
shut down. Therefore, the USWA and Local 1010 were in a relatively powerful
position vis-à-vis Inland. Unfortunately, the International USWA leadership did
nothing to exploit Inland’s vulnerability while it had the chance. Local 1010’s
Rank & File leadership behaved relatively aggressively, but was severely limited
due to the USWA’s exclusive right to approve all agreements.44

Olszanski 22

In the mid 1980’s Rank & File steering committee members Cliff Mezo,
Mike Mezo and Jim Robinson, citing what they said was a drift to the right of
president Bill Andrews, split off from the caucus, forming a new “Steelworkers”
Caucus.45 While they vehemently denied it, the split was seen by the members as
largely racial, their motivation largely opportunistic, at least by those who stayed
with the Rank & File. I was elected Vice President in 1985. When President Bill
Andrews resigned to take a staff job with the USWA International in 1987, I took
over as local union president, as well as Chair of the Rank & File Caucus.

Within a week of taking office as president of Local 1010 in 1987, I was
called by Inland’s second in command in Labor Relations (I’ll call him Bill) who
wanted to “get better acquainted, and bring [me] up to speed, on his vision of the
team relationship" which the company and union were supposedly cultivating.
Within five minutes he was offering to fly me and “three or four of your guys” up
to Michigan in the company jet for the weekend. I declined. Within three months
he was offering a week in Japan at company expense. Dead set against the use of
union office for personal gain, and especially the cooptation it engendered, I turned
that one down too. This individual was unbelievably hypocritical. When a
grievance committeeman was suspended for alleged “insubordination” while
discussing a grievance with his foreman, I asked for an expedited hearing to clear
up the matter, which was causing an already overloaded grievance procedure to
grind to a halt, waiting to see whether in fact Inland could fire a union
representative for contractual union activities. “Bill” refused, saying normal
procedures (which could take months) ought to suffice in this case. In the same
conversation——nearly in the same breath— he asked me to attend a “team”
meeting with an Inland customer. Amazed in spite of myself at this outrageous

Olszanski 23

doubletalk, I took nearly a minute to regain my composure. I then responded by
suspending all joint committee meetings until the union rep was back to work.
“Gee, I’m sorry you feel that way,” or some such idiocy was “Bill’s” reply.
“Bill” had been known by union representatives throughout his years with labor
relations as less than honest. His word was not to be trusted. With Bill, you were
advised to get it in writing, and check the fine print. His nick-name was “snake.”
Shaking his hand made you feel like washing yours afterward. When the top job in
Labor Relations opened up in the early 1990s, Inland management had an
opportunity to demonstrate the sincerity of its efforts to build a cooperative
relationship with the union. Bob Castle, whose qualifications for the job were
equal or superior to “Bills” (most felt he was the best arbitration lawyer Inland
ever had) was also highly respected by all who knew him as a man of unquestioned
honesty and integrity. His word is his bond. “Bill” got the job, sending the loud
and clear message that Inland’s idea of cooperation was really cooptation and
chiseling . Castle subsequently left Inland for a lower paying job with a competitor.
No one who had any dealings with Inland Labor Relations could fail to recognize
the message top management was sending to the union. It resounds throughout the
harbor works to this day.

Inland’s version of company union cooperation and participation teams was
called “Gainsharing,” and included bonus money to grease the wheels. I was dead
set against it, and had made my views clear from the beginning. I became president
just as the first departmental Gainsharing plan was coming up for a vote in the
Coke Plant. My good friend James Ross, Coke Plant griever was supporting the
plan, and expressed to me his view that the workers could “take the money and
run,” without conceding anything the company wanted in return. I tried to talk him

Olszanski 24

out of it, expressing my view that such “team” efforts were anathema to the union,
and would weaken and perhaps destroy it. We knocked heads on the issue, and the
vote came down against it—by a razor thin margin of less than one vote. I had
insisted on a 2/3 vote if I were to approve it, since the secret ballot included
supervisors and non-union clerks as well as union members. At least no
gainsharing plan would be implemented on my watch.

In 1988, Inland approached the union and requested negotiations be opened
on a proposal for fundamental work rule changes in what they said would be a new
bar mill in Plant #4. Threatening to shut down The 10", 21" and 28" Mills, #2
Bloomer and the Main Roll Shop, management offered to invest $70 to $100
million in a state-of-the art Shape Products Division to produce "world class"
structural and automotive steel. They wanted three things the local and the
members felt we could not give them: A re-opening of the contract before it had
expired, a separate and significantly different contract for the new Shape Products
department, and concessions on work rules, job combinations and eliminations,
seniority and wages. They wanted a "skill-based" job reorganization featuring
Operator/Repairman. Reaching consensus among all the union representatives of
the affected departments, along with a nearly unanimous vote of the members from
the affected departments, we refused to negotiate. A couple of months into his
term, my successor, Mike Mezo reversed this position and approved a new
agreement for Shape Products that installed work rule changes designed to
combine and eliminate more jobs. The new investment went in at Plant #4.46

Losing a close 1988 election to Mezo, I was challenged for chair of the
Rank & File Caucus, which I held on to for a couple of years, handing it off to

Olszanski 25

Rudy Schneider in 1991 when he ran for 1010 President. Within 2 years, the Rank
& File caucus virtually dissolved. It had fallen victim to a combination of racial
divisions, lack of an influx of “new blood” (no new hiring for ten years) frustration
and lack of leadership, for which I must assume some of the blame.47

With the demise of the Rank & File Caucus, I believe it is fair to say that
Local 1010’s leadership took a turn another to the right. Without a loyal
opposition, the Mezo “Steelworkers” Caucus has elected many of the top officers
with little and sometimes no opposition for the past 19 years, and has raised no
public objection to the USW International’s strategy of appeasement and
collaboration.48 Former 1010 Rank & Filer Jim Robinson now heads USW District
7 (formerly District 31) and has been anything but critical of USW leadership.
When crew cutting came to #3 Cold Strip Electrical in the 1990’s I was once
again a griever steward and filed grievances. But the consensus among officers of
the Local 1010 grievance committee, as well as the USWA staff representative,
was that any CBA provisions protecting crew size had been long since eroded,
and/or rendered ineffective by arbitration awards.
Today for the first time in its history, downsized to one quarter of its former
membership, demoralized, dominated by the USW International, disabused of any
sense of its own power and stripped of its militant leadership, Local 1010 must
deal with a truly global corporation, instead of the one-plant, family-owned
company which was Inland Steel. Certainly, even the small degree of
independence from the USW International exercised by 1010 in the 1970’s and
1980’s is no longer an option. Whatever bargaining strategy with Arcelor/Mittal is
adopted, neither the Local 1010 rank and file, nor its leaders are apt to have much
of a say in it.

Olszanski 27

I/N Tek and I/N Kote: Inland’s Capital Moves
Inland reorganized as Inland Steel Industries, Inc., a holding company for
Inland Steel Company and Inland Steel Services, in order to separate the profitable
service-center from a (then) lagging steel producing operation, in May of 1986. It
cut steelmaking capacity by 30% by shuttering unprofitable facilities that year, but
simultaneously paved the way for a joint venture with Nippon Steel of Japan to
build I/N Tek, a continuous cold rolling mill in the corn fields near New Carlyle,
Indiana that would add back 1.5 million tons of finished steel capacity. The
Andrews administration of Local 1010, as well as USWA District 31 Director Jack
Parton campaigned publicly for the new plant to be built on available land at the
Harbor Works, but Inland and its new Japanese partner sought a fresh start at the
rural greenfield site, some distance from the influence of the Union and its
experienced members. Like RCA moving from Camden to the rural south,
management sought to move at least part of its capital to a union-free
environment.49 The USWA succeeded in wringing an agreement out of Inland
stipulating that the facility would open as a union shop, and Harbor Works
employees would be considered for jobs there—if they could pass a battery of
tests, including psychological “attitude” tests designed to weed out those who
would not make good “team players.” In fact, of course, union activists or those
with strong union ideals would find it difficult to get hired at I/N Tek. Combining
five formerly separate operations into one, the innovative facility replaced the old
“batch” method of rolling and treating steel with a “continuous” process that never
stops. I/N Tek could finish steel that had taken 12 days at the Harbor Works in
under an hour, with far fewer workers. A second joint venture with Nippon, I/N
Kote was launched in 1989. I/N Kote consists of two galvanizing lines next door to

Olszanski 28

I/N Tek, to apply the zinc coating to its cold rolled steel strip. 50 The new facilities
employed the latest labor-saving robotics, including Automatic Guided Vehicles
(AGV’s) which carry steel coils from one area to another without human control.51
Together they represent a nearly one billion dollar investment (1990 dollars).
Both facilities were organized from the ground up as Japanese-style work
units utilizing self-directed work teams (I/N Tek calls them “Self-Managed
Teams”) “skill-based” job descriptions and classes and a structure quite similar to
the one employed at Indiana's Subaru/Isuzu as described by Laurie Graham.52 A
harbinger of things to come for Inland and the basic steel industry as a whole, I/N
Tek and I/N Kote introduced a compressed set of job descriptions and pay grades,
and sought to blur the distinction between bargaining unit (union) and supervisory
employees. By picking the “right” employees (“team players”) from Harbor
Works applicants, and farm kids who had never seen the inside of a steel mill
before, I/N Tek and I/N Kote were able to implement the new work organization
and culture with minimal resistance. Team players reaped rewards that could
include an expense-paid trip to Japan to study Nippon’s methods in the home
country.53 Several #3 Cold Strip Electricians I worked with for a number of years
transferred to the new facilities, and to a person they uniformly raved about the
wonderful new cooperative work atmosphere there. When talking about work, they
became so animated and exuberant, some of us who still worked at the Harbor
were prompted to ask what they put in the water at New Carlyle, or what they were
smoking. One union activist mechanic I knew well got his transfer by answering
questions as he suspected the “team-oriented” interviewers would like. He
subsequently kept his mouth shut and his head down at the new facility. Together,

Olszanski 29

I/N Tek and I/N Kote employ under 500, but produce around 1.5 million tons per
year of finished sheet.54

Maintenance Work Restructuring: the 1990’s
Hiring into Inland’s Blast Furnace department in 1963, I worked at Inland
Steel’s #3 Cold Strip Mill Electrical Maintenance Department for thirty-one
consecutive years. I retired in February, 1999, just before Inland was acquired by
ISPAT. The mill was then purchased by Mittal, which acquired all the local basic
steel mills (ISPAT/Inland, Bethlehem, LTV) except U.S. Steel and National-
Midwest. During the 1960’s I completed an apprenticeship training program
holding the jobs of Vocational Motor Inspector (VMI) VII through I, then Motor
Inspector Standard (the standard journeyman job in the craft). I subsequently
advanced to Mill Electrical Control Operator (MECO) an above craft rated job
acquired though seniority and a test, then Electrical Technician (ET) the sequential
leader job also acquired by seniority and a test. The Purdue/Inland EET training
program I had attended for 3 years closed its doors in 1986, along with the
apprenticeship program.

I worked my last two years (1997-1998) as an Electrical Inspector. This job
was a straight day job that I finally got after threatening to file a grievance. Trying
to dissuade me from the job, a supervisor told me I would have to learn computers.
“You’ll just have to train me,” I told him. The job, which Inland argued was only
an “assignment” had been created, along with the new job of Planner, about ten
years earlier. These jobs, created as part of Inland’s Japanese-inspired Inspection
and Planning Method of Maintenance program, were originally assigned, in clear

Olszanski 30

violation of the contract, to supervision’s favorites without regard to seniority or
even job rank. The creation of these desirable jobs and assignment on the basis of
favoritism was in itself a powerful form of hierarchical control. These positions
were added, without increasing the total number of maintenance electricians, by
cutting the crews actually assigned to answer trouble calls, repair and maintain the
equipment—a use of technical control to redesign the jobs to get more output per
worker. As a result of numerous similar grievances, Inland finally agreed to assign
electricians to the job based on seniority and passing a test.55 The new crop of
inspectors and planners with whom I came in included many loyal union brothers
(no sisters) who had nothing but contempt and ridicule for “team” propaganda.
We gave management no end of grief.
One response to the assignment of inspectors and planners to write job
plans breaking down complex maintenance and repair procedures into elementary
steps which might be performed by semi-skilled workers (clearly an application of
the detailed division of labor), came from a fellow Inspector, who has never taken
a Labor Studies class, or any college that I know of. He remarked, “Why, this ain’t
nothin’ but that old Taylorism they invented a hundred years ago!” 56 In light of the
changes in the organization of maintenance work at Inland, it is clear that
Taylorist ideas remained alive and well in the mill, but like the swine flu virus,
have adapted by changing form just sufficiently to temporarily overcome the
resistance which continuously develops among the workers and our union to such
job cutting and intensification schemes. One hoped the workers’ immune system
could keep up with the disease spreading tactics of management. Unfortunately it
has not.

Olszanski 31

Over the years Inland, like other U.S. industrial firms, applied numerous
schemes based on the so-called Japanese management style, which changed or
attempted to change the organization of work. While management stressed the
need to improve product quality as a major goal of the programs, they made no
secret of the fact that increased productivity was an equally important goal,
repeatedly citing the bogey of highly productive foreign competitors who were
beating U.S. firms in the marketplace. Since productivity is easily translated into
output per worker hour, and speed-up and job eliminations are an obvious way to
achieve increased productivity, management’s goal of producing more steel with
fewer workers through work intensification has always been transparent.
In the case of Inland’s so-called Inspection and Planning Method of
Maintenance, it was impossible for management to disguise for very long the fact
that new bargaining unit jobs—Inspectors and Planners—would be created at the
expense of other maintenance jobs, resulting in immediate crew size reduction of
the call crews. After a couple of years, as crews were cut even further it became
obvious that a long term goal was to reduce maintenance crews to the absolute
minimum. In cutting call crews, management finally revealed that they would
even accept some increased delay time (time a production unit is down for
unexpected repairs) resulting from cutting crews to the bone.

Motor inspectors, MECO’s and Technicians soon became aware of extra
duties added to their jobs—more forms to fill out. The pace of work obviously
increased as three person crews (later two person crews) were expected to
complete as much work as four did in the past. Those still answering calls tended
to see the Inspectors and Planners chosen by management to sit in the office or

Olszanski 32

newly purchased trailers instead of helping with trouble calls, as partly to blame
for their increased work load.
Wages and pay scales stayed the same, so there was no sharing of increased
productivity gains. The new jobs were cleaner, less physical office jobs, but there
were few of them and they were subject to closer direct control by supervision
than the jobs out on the floor.

Forms of control I observed in my last months at Inland included:

Attempts to apply the detailed division of labor to the electrical sequence.
The planning function formally carried out by the electricians ourselves was
removed and placed in the office in the form of planners, hand-picked and
assigned the task of planning and assigning each job and furnishing step by step
instructions for its completion by the work crew. In conjunction with the planner,
the inspector was responsible for writing job procedures intended to break each
job down into its most basic components, using the experience we had gained over
a lifetime of craft work.
Verbal orders were replaced more and more with written, specific line-ups
which specified in greater and greater detail exactly how each job should be done,
and even how long it should take.
New time sheets for electricians were devised and introduced on which each
electrician must account for time spent on each job to the tenth of an hour. Written
and signed reports were also required of each electrician, specifying in detail
exactly what was done on each job and shift.
In implementing this Japanese-style “inspection-maintenance’ program,
Inland management relied heavily on propaganda to promote “team spirit” and

Olszanski 33

attempt to get us to identify our interests as workers with those of the company in
terms of working more efficiently, “smarter,” faster, and ultimately eliminating the
jobs of our co-workers.
Close supervision, or micro-management, with a higher than previous ratio
of bosses to electricians was used to keep a close eye on our every move. Bosses
started to turn up at the lunch table just in time for the end of the traditional lunch
break, to make sure no one lingered beyond our twenty minute lunch period, as
well as near quitting time, to make sure no one hit the showers early, even though
it was impossible to leave the plant early as a swipe card system had been
implemented which timed in and out times to the second. Some supervisors
excluded inspectors and planners from this close scrutiny to reinforce divisions
between them and the rest of the crew; others tried to apply an even tougher
standard of time accountability to these privileged workers. (Direct or simple
control).
Divide and rule strategies were implemented. Workers were assigned to
work with others than their known friends, putting together people who didn’t get
along well in an effort to defeat “soldiering” and consequent control by the crew
of the work pace.
As always, an occasional foreman job was offered to bargaining unit
employees who kissed up to the bosses, and openings were rumored far in advance
to encourage competition for these jobs. In my experience, foremen promoted
from the ranks were the worst, probably because they had sold out their solidarity
and loyalty to the group for personal gain, thus compromising their integrity. They
also knew all the tricks, most having used them to great effect as union employees.

Olszanski 34

For as long as I worked at Inland the company continuously battled the
union on the issue of testing, attempting to use subjective rather than objective
(multiple choice, true/false, etc.) tests, in order to be able to pick and promote
favorites. In this highly technical field, it was a constant struggle to ensure that
fairness was used in the selection and promotion of VMI's (apprentices) MI's
MECO's, Technicians, Inspectors and Planners. Until the Federal Court ordered
Consent Decree—and at Inland a special plant-wide seniority agreement
negotiated by the Balanoff administration—forced the racial integration of the
crafts and departments, sequence seniority was used to keep the crafts more or less
private clubs over which management exercised extra control. Even after these
improvements, it was a constant struggle to ensure opportunities in the craft for
women and minorities. Racism and sexism were constantly used to divide and rule
in the crafts.
Finally, in the late 1990’s, Inland hired a consultant firm to do a time study
of electrical and mechanical jobs—something few imagined possible in modern
times. For weeks, our every move was monitored, timed and entered into a hand-
held computer in order to determine our efficiency and “dead time” between jobs
and calls. One of the immediate results was across-the-board crew size reductions
in electrical and mechanical sequences, which the union was still contesting with
little success when I retired in 1998. With no response from either local or
international leadership, workers on the shop floor were disorganized and divided
in our response to the newest and almost ludicrous management application of
Taylorism. Many thought of themselves as resisting by acting as usual—rushing to
answer calls and making repairs as quickly as possible so they could return to the
motor room to sit and have coffee. This was, of course, precisely the “dead time”

Olszanski 35

management sought to measure—and eliminate—so many workers unwittingly
assisted management in cutting crew size.
Impacts on the two categories specified by the USW’s Charlie Richardson
(Working Conditions and Union Strength)57 created by Inland’s Inspection Method
of Maintenance Program are as follows:

Working Conditions
Performance evaluation criteria for maintenance electricians under the new
system was codified and monitored closely by requiring detailed reports which
were archived in a central computer and compared to the performance of all
maintenance personnel plant wide.
New technology (computers) were used to standardize, codify, simplify,
quantify and keep track of jobs formally planned and carried out by skilled
electricians with little or no direct supervision.
A major long term goal of management was obviously to deskill as many
maintenance and repair procedures as possible, enabling them to lower entry level
skill requirements or and/or use non craft personnel to do these jobs. While
management insisted this program would result in improved quality of
maintenance, the use of fewer highly skilled craft people would seem to invite a
lowering of the quality of work performed.
As mentioned above, the selection of Inspectors and Planners, their training
and qualification has been closely controlled by management, with the clear aim of
undermining seniority, and with it, union solidarity. The local union’s belated
contesting of selection and training procedures had only limited success. Training
for the new jobs was largely determined, organized and controlled by management,
and included a great deal of the kind of team training described by Richardson in

Olszanski 36

“Employee Involvement; Watching Out for the Tricks and Traps.” Absent any
local union representation, trainees were placed in situations which tended to
prevent “Acting Like a Union” strategies from being employed, though some of us
who accidentally found ourselves in this team training certainly did our best to
promote union solidarity and identification in the face of the management strategy
of encouraging the “we (Inlanders) are all in this together” philosophy with it’s
resultant undermining of union identification and solidarity. On the first day of a
two week long training session, I told the group the cautionary tale about the
“cowboy and the snake” warning fellow union members of the dangers of joining
management’s team. For the rest of training, we (union members) continuously
referred to our team as the “Cowboys” as opposed to the “Snakes” of management.
The variety of tasks performed by individual workers was reduced, by
removing as much as possible of the brain work to the office, to be done by the
newly-trained team of Inspectors and Planners.
With smaller crews and trouble calls increasingly answered by one instead
of two or more electricians, social interaction among the workers is severely
curtailed. Often today, Maintenance Technician—Electrical (MTE’s) are alone in
the plant, as Technicians used to be on Christmas midnight “fire watch” turns,
with only telephone contact with other maintenance people.
Health and safety concerns abound, with electricians increasingly working
alone, even on highly dangerous jobs, and less skilled workers assigned to do work
for which they have inadequate training, skill and experience.
Sub-contracting of maintenance work, while in theory limited under the
CBA, has become more attractive to management as maintenance jobs are
deskilled.

Olszanski 37

Union Strength
The overall number of union members, as well as union jobs as a percentage
of the total workforce was reduced as maintenance jobs were cut.
Management continues to increase contracting out and out-sourcing of
repair and maintenance work.
Management can certainly use the archived job procedures contributed by
skilled, experienced electricians to make it easier to keep the operation going
without us—as in the case of a strike or work slowdown.
This program increased the proportion of critical skills falling outside the
bargaining unit, and the potential for using unskilled or semiskilled contract, non-
union personnel is therefore increased.
Some new skills (Inspection and Planning) were created inside the
bargaining unit. The USW must try to maintain and/or increase union control over
these highly skilled jobs.
As mentioned, training for the new skills, as controlled by management, has
tended to undermine the seniority system. This appears to have been a major goal
in management’s use of training, along with promoting “team spirit” and
consequently undermining union solidarity.
Control over how work is done was to some extent taken off the shop floor,
as was mentioned. If management achieves its goal of winning over Inspectors
and Planners to the company “team,” it will also effectively take this control out of
the hands of the bargaining unit.
Social interaction among union workers was increasingly curtailed by this
program, with workers more and more isolated from each other during work hours.
This was exacerbated by the overall reduction of the workforce throughout the

Olszanski 38

mill, since there are fewer and fewer workers to be able to interact and the work
stations are farther and farther apart.
Jurisdiction, between departmental maintenance and the plant wide Mobile
Maintenance “bull gang” was greatly impacted by the program, which farmed out
more and more work to the bull gang.
Production employees are impacted by this program as management
increasingly pushes to have routine repairs and maintenance performed by
operating personnel. The operator/repairman concept is now firmly entrenched.
The maintenance work changes implemented by Inland Steel at my
workplace in the 1990’s, while ostensibly aimed at improving the quality and
efficiency of work, served to eliminate jobs, undermine union strength and
solidarity, increase management control and ultimately improve Inland Steel’s
bottom line, at the expense of the workers. They encountered little resistance from
either the USW International or the now relatively passive Local 1010 leadership.
Concentrating on high value-added steel products and quality improvement
in the production process, Inland’s “yield of prime steel” rose from 79.8% in 1996
to 83.7% in 1997. Each percentage point of gain in yield translates to about $15
million of increased profit.58 Steel production and shipments rose in the 1990’s, as
did profitability, along with labor productivity at Inland.

Olszanski 39

Thus “downsized,” “lean and mean,” and “rationalized,” Inland became an
attractive property and was purchased by Ispat Internation N.V. (based in the
Netherlands) in 1998. As Ispat Inland Inc., the company eliminated nearly 20%
more of its workforce by 2002, to 7,800 employees, and Local 1010’s membership
dwindled proportionately. By then it was the sixth-largest integrated steel producer
in the United States, producing about 5 percent of the nation’s steel.

On October 25, 2004, Ispat Inland became part of a new, merged company,
Mittal Steel:
The deal announced by Ispat Inland on Monday has billionaire steel
magnate Lakshmi Mittal first combining his two international companies,
Ispat Inland and LNM Holdings. The merged company, called Mittal Steel
Co., will then buy ISG for $4.5 billion in cash and stock.59

By 2005, the membership of USW Local 1010 stood at just 4000. Add to
this another 400 or so at I/N Tek and I/N Coat, and you have a figure lower than
what it was when SWOC Local 1010 was organized, during the Great Depression
of the 1930's.60 The November, 2005 contract at Mittal Indiana Harbor West 1010
reduced job classifications from more than 30 to just 5, as it had at all other Mittal
USA facilities. "The new agreements that were negotiated by the union and our
competitors contain many new approaches to how work is organized and managed
that are expected to improve productivity and labor costs," said William P.
Boehler, Ispat Inland's director of industrial relations, in 2004. "Attempting to
adapt these changes to our situation takes a good deal of time and discussion."61
They managed. New job classifications are much broader and cover a wide range
of duties. The phrase I learned as an eighteen year old new hire in 1963, “It’s not

Olszanski 40

my job,” has little or no meaning anymore. To a large extent, every job is every
employee’s job.
In the electrical department, the jobs of Motor Inspector Standard (MI),
Motor Inspector Weldor, Mill Electrical Control Operator (MECO), Electrical
Technican, (ET) and the separate sequence job of Instrument Control Technician
were combined into one new single job classification, Maintenance Technician—
Electrical (MTE) at Labor Grade 4.62 With no apprenticeship or training program,
the company hires trained electricians as it needs them.

Olszanski 41

Arcelor/Mittal: Inland Absorbed

In October of 2004, Tycoon Lakshmi N. Mittal’s $4.5 billion purchase of
International Steel Group (ISG) absorbed the former ISPAT/Inland.
In June of 2006, Mittal merged with Arcelor, becoming the world’s largest steel
company, producing 49 million tons (about 10% of world steel production) with 61
plants in 23 countries, employing 318,000 workers. The steel business is very
good these days, with Mittal Steel netting $3.5 billion in income on revenue of
$28.1 billion in 2005. But Mittal is hardly satisfied. According to the Interrnational
Metalworkers Federation (IMF) Mittal announced 26,000 job eliminations in
existing plants in 2006 and have displayed, particularly in Eastern Europe and
Ireland, “…a lack of respect of agreements and an obsession with cost reductions,
employee reductions and [further] increases in productivity.”63
Listed only as “USA, Indiana Harbor East and West” (which includes
both Inland and the old Youngstown/ LTV plant on the other side of the Indiana
Harbor Ship Canal) the old Inland Steel plant has completely lost its identity within
the enormous global Arcelor/Mittal corporate structure. 64
As of 2007, the old Inland #3 Cold Strip Mill (West) is completely shut
down, and people I used to work with there describe it as a ghost town. Next door,
the slightly newer Inland #3 Cold Strip (East) still operates, with a much smaller
crew. It is clear that an on-going process of rationalization continues, with
Arcelor/Mittal management shuttering its least productive facilities, shifting
production to the most productive, and continuing the process of down-sizing the
workforce. But, like the Block family and subsequent Inland Steel management
Lakshmi Mittal tries to instill the myth of a paternalistic, caring management that

Olszanski 42

looks out for the workers—in particular their safety and health and wants to
cooperate with their union "partners" in improving the lot of their workers. He
states:
Arcelor Mittal sets Health and Safety above all other priorities and
is committed to achieving the highest standards for our employees.
We have instilled a strong safety culture at every level of the
company that is supported by a robust set of safety standards.
We are pleased and encouraged in joining our trade unions in
Achieving our joint vision to be the safest steel company in the world.
One of our first joint initiatives since the merger of Arcelor and Mittal
was the undertaking of a global safety and health day on March 6,
2007 wherein management and trade unions from around the world
simultaneously committed to achieving our safety and health goals.65

Yet a 2004 move to terminate Inland widow's pensions hurt the new owner's
image on the eve of his acquisition. Mass demonstrations at the Harbor Works and
a tough stance on the issue forced the company to back down.66

Olszanski 43

USW International Response
67

The USWA granted wage and benefit cuts in 1983 contract negotiations and
a wage freeze in 1986, throughout the industry. In the U.S. steel industry as a
whole, output per steelworker nearly tripled from 1987 to 2005, according to
Bureau of Labor Statistics figures.68 During that period the USWA failed to secure
a significant share of the increased profits flowing from this enormous productivity
improvement for its members, either in the form of real hourly wage increases or a
shorter work week. The strategy of collaborating with steel management in an
attempt to restrict steel imports, criticized by Howard, was a stop-gap measure at
best, and did not address the effects management’s push for job-cutting and work
intensification.
There has been no strike activity of any kind by the United Steelworkers
(USW) or Local 1010 at Inland since 1959. That is to say, in 2009, it will have
been fifty years since strike action was taken at the Indiana Harbor Works.
The former USWA, now known as the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber,
Manufacturing, Energy, Allied-Industrial and Service Workers International Union (USW) , Amicus and the
Transportation & General Workers Union (T&GWU) of the United Kingdom
announced in Ottawa April 18, 2007 the start of “…a formal process to prepare
the ground for the creation of the first Trans-Atlantic trade union:”
At a ceremony held in Ottawa at the USW’s Canadian National Policy
Congress, representatives of the three unions signed an accord to set up a
merger exploration committee which will be tasked with laying down a
foundation for a legal merger within one year. The new union would
represent more than 3.4 million members in the US, Canada, UK and
Ireland. It would be the world’s biggest union and would be expected to
attract other union organizations throughout the world into membership.
During the exploration process, the unions will engage in coordinated
campaigning and common approaches to collective bargaining with

Olszanski 44

multinational companies. This agreement follows a strategic alliance signed
between Amicus and the USW two years ago. Amicus and the T&GWU will
join together as one union with two million members after May 1, 2007 that
will be based in London and called “Unite.” 69

"Global capital requires a Global response," states the founding statement of
70
Unite.

This is clearly the most important undertaking of the USW in a number of
years. Initially, one hoped that U.S. union leaders, collaborating with their
ostensibly more progressive and militant European counterparts would listen more
than talk, and learn the lessons a class-conscious labor movement had to teach. The
prestigious American Bar Association calls the merger "…the first truly global
union and…the largest concentration of union power in a generation."71

In November 2006 the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC),
representing 168 million workers in 153 countries, was formed in Vienna. As Alan
Howard of Dissent Magazine put it,

…fifteen years after the demise of the Soviet Union and well into the
third decade of corporate-driven globalization, the international trade union
movement was reorganized to eliminate its debilitating cold war political
divisions and to enhance coordination across industrial lines made obsolete
by globalization.

The founding was “…hailed as historic by the few dozen people who
follow these things, which it may well be, though you probably missed the
coverage in your local newspaper.”72 But the ITUC’s unclear ideology or
connection to the IMF raises doubts. Since the AFL and CIO effectively ended
global union organizing by their withdrawal from the then huge and powerful

Olszanski 45

World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) during the cold war, real labor
globalism has been off the table.73 The new initiatives find a European trade union
bureaucracy little better equipped than the North Americans to face off against
ascendant trans-national capital bent on aggressive implementation of a neoliberal
agenda, which “seeks to apply in Europe the labor discipline it gets away with in
the United States.”74

A September 16-18, 2007 “IMF Global Arcelor Mittal Meeting” in Montreal
was attended by no less than 5 USW Local 1010 delegates, in addition to District 7
Director Jim Robinson, USW president Leo Gerard and 33 other U.S. delegates.
On the Agenda were heavy hitters from the International Metalworkers' Federation
(IMF) the USW as well as Arcelor/Mittal management. Among other issues
discussed, the delegates stressed the continuing reliance on "team" concepts to
solve workers' problems. As a USW press release put it:

The world's largest steel company Arcelor Mittal and trade unions
representing its employees from over 20 countries today announced
a new and innovative approach to Health and Safety concerns in
the company. Meeting in Montreal at the International Metalworkers'
Federation's first world conference of Arcelor Mittal and its trade
unions, the company and the unions committed themselves to a joint
programme of education and training to raise health and safety
standards throughout the company.75
The "new and innovative approach" lauded here sounds a lot like the same
old joint company union participation teams of the 1980's—a bankrupt strategy
that has done the labor movement irreparable harm. The IMF and the USW
jointly hosted the global conference. Trade unions from the following countries
took part in the company/union meeting: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada,
Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Liberia, Luxemburg, Macedonia,

Olszanski 46

Mexico, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
United Kingdom, United States of America.
The sketchy information available at this time suggests the gathering was
primarily by and for unions, with at least part of the purpose being to strategize
approaches to dealing with Arcelor/Mittal management. But the presence of a
number of Mittal management representatives on the agenda implies that it was
also an attempt to do a company union partnership conference at the same time.
The confused message is typical of the U.S. business union approach taken by the
USW in the past. Leo Gerard puts it this way:
The size and scope of the company [Arcelor/Mittal] means that
as unions we have to develop a global strategy. …the ultimate
aim must be two fold, first a successful company that provides
job security for its workers and second, recognition of the
valuable role that unions play. Future challenges such as
overcapacity in the steel industry and the threat of a race to
the bottom are real issues that can only be dealt with at the
international level.76

And only, should we add, by collaboration with Mittal management?77

The official statement of the IMF conference: “We recognize that a
successful company provides job security,” draws into question the class-conscious
character of the IMF, as well as the new global alliance. Howard suggests the U.S.
union bureaucracy is “ideologically exhausted.”78 Does this characterization apply
to the Europeans, as well?

Olszanski

L515 Bibliography

Agreement Between Inland Steel Company and United Steelworkers of America
Indiana Harbor, Indiana, Chicago Heights, Illinois. September 1, 1965.

Indiana Harbor Works, August 1, 1974.

Indiana Harbor Works. August 1, 1977.






AGREEMENT between International Steel Group, Inc. and the United
Steelworkers of America, AFL - CIO – CLC December 15, 2002

Agreement Between Mittal Steel USA and the United Steel, Paper, and Forestry,
Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial, and Service Workers
International Union, November13, 2005.

Allen, David. Editor. “End of Employment Continuity a Necessary Step.”
In The Inland Steelmaker, Volume 42, Number 30, July 26, 1996.
Front Page.

Allen, David. Editor. “Four Key Efforts Hold Profit Potential.”
In The Inland Steelmaker, Volume 42, Number 36, September 6, 1996.
Front Page.

Olszanski

American Bar Association (ABA). Agenda for 2007 Fall Meeting.
http://www.abanet.org/intlaw/fall07/agenda_corpfinance.html

Arcelor/Mittal “Fact Book” available online at:
http://www.arcelormittal.com/rls/data/pages/476/ArcelorMittal_Factbook2006_EN
.pdf

Benman, Keith. “Steel shakeout imminent Locals prepare for mega-merger.” NWI
Times.com October 26, 2004. http://uswa1010.org/info/articles/times10-26-
04.htm

Beverage, William. Full Employment in a Free society. London: George Allen &
Unwin Ltd. 1944.

Braverman, Harry (1998) Labor and Monopoly Capital, the Degradation of
Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press.

CBS Reports: Inside the Union T.V. Documentary. Produced by Irv Drasnin.
New York: CBS News. 1978.

Cowie, Jefferson (1999) Capital Moves: RCA’s 70 year Quest for Cheap
Labor. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press.

Fisher, Douglas A. Steel Serves the Nation, 1901-1951, The Fifty Year
Story of United States Steel. New York: United States Steel
Corporation. 1951

Graham, Laurie. (1995) On the Line at Suburu-Isuzu. Ithica, NY: Cornell
University Press.

Graham, Laurie. (1997) “Permanent Temporaries” in Research in the
Sociology of Work, the Globalization of Work. Greenwich, CT:
JAI Press Inc. Editor Randy Hodson.

Guzzo, Maria. "USW holding a mixed bag in contract negotiations:
Mittal units 'amicable' despite little progress." American Metal Market,
July 7, 2005. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3MKT/is_26-
3_113/ai_n14812284

Olszanski

Hardin, Ernest. Interview with author. October 31, 1996.

Howard, Allen (2007) “the Future of Global Unions: Is Solidarity Still Forever?”
In Dissent, Fall 2007. http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=942.

Inland Steel Industries, 1997 Operations Review and Business Highlights.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cnoc/IADops.html

Johnston, Rob. “Mittal: A Global Giant” in Metal World. No. 4 2006. pp. 18-22.

Lane, James B and Olszanski, Mike.“Steelworkers Fight Back: Inland’s
Local 1010 and the Sadlowski/Balanoff campaigns, Rank and File
Insurgency in the Calumet Region During the 1970’s” Steel Shavings,
Volume 30, 2000. Gary, Indiana: Indiana University Northwest.

Levering, Robert, et al. (1984) The 100 Best Companies to Work For in
America. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing

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A Reconstruction and Defense” in Nature, Society and Thought:
A Journal of Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Volume 11,
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Lenin, V.I. (1916) “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”
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http://www.uswa1010.org/history/1010history.htm

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Luerssen, Frank W. CEO Inland Steel Industries. “Making the Joint
Venture Work” letter to the editor in New York Times, February 4, 1990.
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Marx, Karl. (1867) Capital Volumes I & II. [1967] New York:
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Steel Company, Volume 4 No. 2, February, 1988, P. 2.

Olszanski, Mike. "We Will Not Negotiate!!! Summary of 'Shape Products'
Proposal Presented to the Union," in Local 1010 Steelworker at Inland Steel
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Olszanski, Mike. The 1010 Rank & File in SWOC/USWA Strikes: A Social
Movement Becomes a Bureaucracy, Research paper for L580 Strikes Class Indiana
University, Spring, 2004 at Calumet Regional Archives

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South End Press.

Popagain, Martin T. Interview with author. Novemebr 6, 1996.

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