By KEVIN NEVERS

The United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and the Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Workers International Union (PACE) are set to join forces, in a merger which would create the largest industrial union in North America.

According to a joint statement released Tuesday, the international executive boards of both unions have voted unanimously to approve the merger. Members themselves will vote on the merger at concurrent conventions in April.

The new entity would be called the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial, and Service Workers International Union, and it would represent more than 850,000 active members in more than 8,000 bargaining units in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean and another 400,000 retired members.

“The newly merged union will be the dominant union in North America in metals, paper and forestry products, tire and rubber, mining, glass, chemicals, energy, and other basic resource industries,” the statement said. “It also will have a very strong presence in equipment and machinery, stone, clay and concrete, other manufacturing, transportation, utilities, and the service sector.”

“Our unions share a commitment to innovative bargaining strategies that protect our members in many ways while maintaining and building the productive capacity of the companies they work in,” USWA International President Leo Gerard said.

“We’re also pledged to using our successes with our joint Rapid Response and political programs to challenge anti-worker forces bent on undermining the futures of our active and retired members,” Gerard added.

“By joining forces with the USWA, PACE members will have greater bargaining power, because this merger creates a larger union presence in our core industries and gives us more leverage at the bargaining table,” PACE President Boyd Young said. “Once merged, our union will immediately be a major presence in North America’s core industrial sectors and that strength of diversity will protect and promote our bargaining agendas.”

“PACE members will have access to a $150 million defense fund,” Young added, “so that we can take on employers who make unreasonable demands at the bargaining table. Furthermore, with an organizing budget of over $30 million per year, we have the ability to strategically organize workers in our core industries.”

A Union to be Reckoned With

Steelworkers concerned about losing their proud name, the USWA, and getting a mouthful instead —USPFRMEAISWIU—shouldn’t be. USWA spokesman Gerald Dickey told the Chesterton Tribune today that members will still be known as steelworkers and the union called the USW for short.

Neither, Dickey said, should steelworkers be concerned about their best interests being lost in the shuffle. “Steelworkers aren’t just fighting for steel jobs. We need to look at other manufacturing sectors, where our steel is being used, in the auto industry and the appliance industry. Those jobs are being lost to other countries. If we don’t have somebody to sell steel to, then we really don’t need the mills.”

Dickey noted that the paper industry, to take an example, is at the same crossroads. “There’s been no investment in domestic paper mills,” he said, “the companies aren’t keeping their plants modernized, and U.S. pulp is being sent to mills in Asia.”

“What are we going to be?” Dickey asked. “A third-world country providing natural resources to manufacturing plants in other nations?”

In short, Dickey said, “we’ve got to somehow level the playing field.”

Over the last couple of years, Dickey remarked, the USWA and PACE have pursued an informal “strategic alliance,” in recognition of their shared stake in the health of the manufacturing sector. But the formal merger of the two unions will create “a much bigger political force” and much greater opportunity for unified “political action.”

Or as the joint statement put it, “The combined union will have over 1.25 million active and retired members to advocate for worker-friendly legislation and candidates. Together, PACE and the USWA will be a major political force in key battleground states and provinces in the U.S. and Canada.”

Some History

PACE represents 275,000 workers in 1,500 locals and is the fourth largest industrial union in the U.S. It is itself the product of a merger: the combination in 1999 of the United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU) and the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union (OCAW).

The USWA, meanwhile, is no stranger to mergers. It originated in embryo in 1936, when the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers (AAISTW) joined ranks with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), the latter created that year to coordinate a monumental drive to organize the mills. Six years later, in 1942—after much success and no little bloodshed, including the killing of 10 steelworkers by police at Republic Steel in Chicago in 1936 and the injuring of 100 more—the AAISTW and SWOC disbanded at a convention in Cleveland, Ohio, and the USWA was formally established as a constitutional body.

Since then the USWA has merged with nine other unions: the Aluminum Workers of America in 1944; the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers in 1967; the United Stone and Allied Product Workers of America in 1971; Allied and Technical Workers of America—an autonomous unit of the United Mine Workers known as District 50—in 1972; the Upholsterers International Union of North America in 1985; the United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum, and Plastic Workers of America in 1995; the Aluminum, Brick, and Glass Workers Union in 1996; the Canadian Division of the Transportation Communications International Union in 1998; and, most recently, the American Flint Glass Workers Union in 2003.

Posted 1/12/2005