US Steel cites Donald Trump in resuming Fairfield Works construction project
U.S. Steel Corp. will restart construction on an idled manufacturing facility in Alabama, and it gave some of the credit to President Donald Trump’s trade policies in an announcement Monday. Trump’s “strong trade actions” are partly responsible for the resumption of work on an advanced plant near Birmingham, the Pittsburgh-based company said in a statement. The administration’s tariffs have raised prices on imported steel and aluminum. The manufacturer also cited improving market conditions, union support and government incentives for the decision. Work will resume immediately, the company said, and the facility will have an annual capacity of 1.6 million tons (1.5 million metric tons). U.S. Steel said it also will update other equipment and plans to spend about $215 million, adding about 150 full-time workers. The furnace is expected to begin producing steel in late 2020. The 16,000-member United Steelworkers praised the decision to resume work, which followed an agreement with the union reached last fall. “This decision paves the way for a solid future in continuing to make steel in Alabama and the Birmingham region,” Leo W. Gerard, the president of the international union, said in a statement. U.S. Steel shut down its decades-old blast furnace at Fairfield Works in 2015, idling about 1,100 employees, and said it would replace the operation with an electric furnace. The company then blamed conditions in the steel, oil and gas industries as it suspended work in December 2015 on an electric arc furnace at its mill in Fairfield, located just west of Birmingham. The project stalled until the announcement Monday. Trump imposed tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on imported aluminum on June 1, 2018. The move was to protect U.S. national security interests, he said, but other countries said the taxes break global trade rules, and some have imposed tariffs of their own. Republished with permission from the Associated Press
Selma auto workers asks union to go away
Workers at a Selma auto supplier have signed a petition asking the United Auto Workers union to “leave this business and us, its employees, alone.” About 80 percent of workers at the Lear Corporation-owned Renosol Seating plant signed an April 6 petition asking the UAW to stop investigating a nearly year-long dispute, The Montgomery Advertiser reports. “We do not need this union or any union here,” the petition says. Last May a public relations firm representing the workers said about three-quarters of the plant’s 90 workers had respiratory problems associated with a chemical used during manufacturing. Federal regulators found air quality at the plant to be within federal guidelines, and Lear says some workers are engaging in baseless scare tactics orchestrated by the UAW. Since then, the plant fired one of the workers who spoke out about the claims and is suing her for defamation. The firing has spawned a federal whistleblower retaliation investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor. The union blasted the recent petition in a statement Thursday, accusing the plant’s management of using illegal tactics to coerce workings into signing it. “It is perfectly clear that the ‘petition’ was misrepresented to workers over the six-plus months that management has been circulating versions of it,” read a statement attributed to the Selma Workers Organizing Committee. Plant production worker Jacqueline Atkins disputed that claim and said management had no role in the petition. “Everybody read it and signed it of their own free will,” Atkins said. “We were not forced. We were not tricked. Nobody threatened us any kind of way.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press. Photo Credit
