However, Mark Glyptis, president of United Steelworkers Local 2911 at the mill, said it doesn’t mean 250 workers have been “put out on the street.”
“There are some voluntary reductions at this point. We have been working with the company in trying to find the people affected and to find them work in other parts of the mill,” Glyptis said. “We’ve been working very diligently and trying to find work. There are no plans for anyone to go on the street on an involuntary basis at this point. The USW is working with management in Chicago and locally to cushion any effect on employees. We’re making progress.”
Glyptis said he didn’t have an exact number of those who already have taken voluntary layoffs with the hot mill closure, but he said “it’s a pretty small group.”
He said the hot mill is being “taken down and mothballed.”
“It will be winterized, so it could be brought back up,” he added.
Glyptis said the hot mill dates to 1927 and was rebuilt, at a cost of several hundred million dollars to the former employee-owned Weirton Steel Corp., in the 1990s.
“One reason being given is that it’s part of the consolidation of the industry. As companies consolidate, all kinds of methodologies are being used to determine what survives and what doesn’t,” Glyptis said.
Since it bought the Weirton mill from ISG in spring 2005, Mittal has maintained it wants to return the plant to prominence in tin production — once a mainstay of Weirton’s business. Glyptis said a tension leveler system has been delivered and built on the No. 6 plater line in the tin mill. Engineering work is being done on site.
Following the shutdown of the plant’s hot end, Mittal had been shipping slabs for conversion to coil by the hot mill from its Sparrows Point, Md., and Cleveland plants. Now that Weirton is out of the slab conversion part of the process, coils are being shipped to the plant for coating and processing. Glyptis said hot-band coils are being shipped in by truck and rail from the Indiana Harbor plant near Chicago and from Cleveland.
ArcelorMittal is selling the Sparrows Point plant under a consent agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice regarding concentration of ownership of tin production in the eastern part of North America. Weirton could have been sold under the agreement and was the subject of negotiations with Esmark, owner of Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp., last February when the Justice Department announced its choice to force Mittal to sell the Maryland works.
Esmark is part of a consortium trying to wrap up the $1.35 billion purchase of Sparrows Point, but the deal has stalled as talks continue between Mittal and the United Steelworkers over funding of a retirement plan.