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Old Posted Apr 28, 2013, 2:34 PM
thistleclub thistleclub is offline
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U.S. Steel to start third lock out Sunday
(Hamilton Spectator, Steve Arnold, April 27 2013)

For the third time since it was allowed into Canada U. S. Steel will lock out a portion of its Canadian workforce on Sunday to back demands for contract concessions.

The company announced the action Thursday morning affecting about 1,000 workers.

“I really don’t think anything can be done to stop this now,” said Bill Ferguson, president of Local 8782 of the United Steel Workers. “This company has had three sets of negotiations since it came to Canada and this is its third lock out.”

Lake Erie workers were previously locked out for eight months from August 2009-April 2010 and Hamilton workers faced a similar confrontation from November 2010 to October 2011.

Those earlier lock outs were over company demands for sweeping changes to the pension plans. Those demands included the end of pension indexing for retirees and closing the defined benefit pension plan to new hires, pushing them instead into a defined contribution system.

The issues in this contract round aren’t as stark. The company wants to cap vacation entitlements for new employees, to compress more than two dozen job classes into eight and to change the cost of living formula to pay 80 per cent less than it does now.

The company’s package seemed to offer a general wage increase of $1.01 an hour – but workers quickly identified that as a cost of living allowance payment they’d earned under the previous contract. The company’s real offer was no raise for three years.

U. S. Steel also lowered the trigger for payments under its profit sharing plan – a move workers dismissed since the plan did not pay anything last year and workers don’t expect it to pay anything this year either. They also note dire warnings from the company that the Nanticoke plant is a major money loser.

“A lot of the things in that package are things they already owe us from the last contract,” Ferguson said. “It’s all part of their propaganda campaign.”

U. S. Steel Canada spokesman Trevor Harris did not return repeated calls for comment.

American steel analyst Chuck Bradford said the confrontation comes at a time when U. S. Steel is losing money in a soft market and wondered if a “get tough” attitude with Canadian workers isn’t a scrap being thrown to market analysts who will pass judgment on the company’s first quarter earnings report Tuesday.

“Maybe they’re trying to make a show because of the losses they’re going to report on Tuesday,” he said. “The issues this time out really aren’t that big.

“We can only hope that some level heads realize this really isn’t in anyone’s best interests,” he added.
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