By KEVIN NEVERS

ArcelorMittal has blinked.

Just before 2 p.m. on Saturday (CST) the presidents of 16 United Steelworkers (USW) locals voted 15-1 to endorse a new tentative four-year agreement with the company and present that contract to the membership for a vote.

On all the major issues—the so-called “bulleted items”—the company has relented and met the union’s terms, Local 6787 President Paul Gipson told the Chesterton Tribune on Saturday. “It’s a pattern-plus contract. It’s a hell of a contract. It’s a very rich package.”

Only 24 hours previously there had been nothing between the USW and ArcelorMittal but daylight, the union’s negotiators were tired and angry and grim, and a walkout at 12:01 a.m. on Monday—Labor Day—seemed inevitable. Twenty-four hours later Gipson gave the Burns Harbor plant manager the green light to fire up the coke ovens and the blast furnaces.

To those blast furnaces, in fact—not only the two at the Burns Harbor facility but the company’s seven others in the U.S.—Gipson attributed the victory, to the likelihood of those furnaces being damaged in an outage performed by management alone. “We made them worry about those furnaces,” he said. “We always had the biggest concern for the safety of the guys running them and for the integrity of the furnaces themselves. They saw our deep concern. We seemed to have more concern about those furnaces than they did. They waited too long to start banking them. They should have started at least 10 days before the expiration of the contract.”

But Gipson also attributed the victory to the courage and resoluteness of the membership in voting to authorize a strike in the first place. “It came from all our people,” he said. “They won this.”

Or as a statement released by Local 6787 at 2:37 p.m. on Saturday put it, “The huge majorities who voted to authorize the Bargaining Committee and the International Union to call a strike if needed provided additional pressure on the company to meet our justified demands for a fair and equitable contract, and that pressure put us over the top on Saturday morning. . . . The tentative agreement follows the pattern set by the agreement with U.S. Steel and also solves important problems unique to ArcelorMittal steelworkers.”

Details

•A signing bonus of $6,000.

•Wages: 9/1/08, $1; 9/1/09, 4 percent; 9/1/10, 4 percent; 9/1/11, 4 percent.

•Steelworker Pension Trust (SPT): on 1/01/09 the company will increase its contribution from $1.80 to $2.65 per hour, based on a 40-hour week, resulting in approximately $100 per month per year of service at current SPT rates.

•Defined Benefit (old Inland) Pensions: on 1/01/09 for years of service up to 30, the multiplier will increase from $56.25 to $65 per month per year of service; on 1/01/09 for years of service over 30, it will increase from $56.25 to $85; and on 1/01/09 for future years of service, it will be set at $100.

•Retiree health care: a contribution of $70 per month for pre-Medicare eligible retirees, and of $35 per month for Medicare eligible ones, fixed for the life of the contract.

•Voluntary Employee Benefit Association (VEBA) Trust Fund: a company contribution of $25 million per quarter for the life of the contract, used to continue to provide benefits for retirees of Acme, Bethlehem, and LTV, and to offset increases in health-care costs for the current and future retirees of ArcelorMittal.

•Sickness and Accident: 70 percent of base pay with no cap.

•Incentives: current incentive rates are protected.

•Profit-sharing: an improved plan which pays beginning with the first dollar of U.S. profits.

•Capital investments: at least $3 billion worth in the U.S. plants.

“These are only highlights,” the statement said. “There are other improvements, including resolutions of a number of local issues at each of our plants.”

The next step, Gipson said, is ratification. All members will be receiving a summary of the new contract and a mail-in ballot to go with it. Then, over the next couple of weeks, Local 6787 will hold meetings at which the document will be presented and explained in detail. When members feel comfortable doing so, they can post their ballot. “The members will have plenty of time to digest it, scrutinize it. It’s all very democratic and it’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Gipson noted that single nay vote was cast by the president of Local 2604, representing the 217 members at ArcelorMittal’s galvanized mill in Lackawanna, N.Y. “They’re destined to close that plant down,” Gipson said, and while the new contract has provisions for the members there—the right to work at a Canadian facility operated by the company, travel expenses, relocation funds—“I can understand why he voted against the contract. He’s got to go back and tell his people the plant is still going to close.”

Gipson’s final word: “I’m not even going to retire now. I’m going to sit back and enjoy this contract. I’m loving it.”

From the International

In a separate statement released on Saturday, USW International President Leo Gerard praised the membership’s “unwavering, long-term solidarity and support of the Bargaining Committee” and noted that both “members and retirees at ArcelorMittal now have the opportunity to enjoy the employment security, economic security, and retirement security they earned through years of hard work and sacrifice.”

USW District I Director David McCall—who chaired the Bargaining Committee—added “that the solidarity of the union membership during the past four months of negotiations, and especially over the past several days, was absolutely key to achieving fairness at the bargaining table,” the statement said.

“We believe that ratification of the proposed agreement is a major step toward raising the industry standard in wages, benefits, and other contractual protections without sacrificing the long-term viability of ArcelorMittal in a competitive market,” McCall said.

USW District 7 Director Jim Robinson—who served as secretary of the Bargaining Committee—observed that “the union members and retirees at ArcelorMittal deserve special recognition for keeping their plants open and communities alive through the steel crisis that began in 1998 and led to nearly 50 bankruptcies before it ended,” the statement said.

“We know that many of these plants would have been shut down years ago if not for the leadership role these men and women assumed when the time came to restructure and consolidate the steel industry in North America,” Robinson said.

Posted 9/2/2008