Steelworkers who couldn't get their jobs back by walking
the picket line for almost three months are turning to financial pressure in their battle
against Pueblo's Rocky Mountain Steel.
The president of the United Steelworkers of America, George Becker, and the executive
vice president of the AFL-CIO, Linda Chavez-Thompson, announced in late January that the
steelworkers local in The Dalles, Ore., and the company for which most of the union
members work, Northwest Aluminum, will close a $20 million pension account at Wells Fargo
Bank.
Union officials say Wells Fargo, as the principal lender to the parent company of Rocky
Mountain Steel, Oregon Steel, is financing "the war on workers at the Pueblo
mill."
About 1,400 union workers on Oct. 3 struck the Pueblo mill, which recently changed its
name from DF&I Steel. The striking workers cited as their main complaints forced
overtime and a lack of pension benefits for employees who worked under a previous owner.
A spokesman at the Western Council of Industrial Workers in Portland, Ore., said that
organization has already closed most of its Wells Fargo accounts. Mike Pieti said the
union will have withdrawn more than $5 million from Wells Fargo to show its support for
the striking steelworkers.
"We can't work with an organization that is supporting a company that is putting
people out of work," Pieti said.
A spokesman at the Denver branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers said
the leaders of that organization have also voted to take its bank business elsewhere. The
group was not able to offer an estimate of how much money is involved.
The Steelworkers ended the strike unconditionally on Dec. 30, but was told there were
fewer than 30 jobs available. Oregon Steel hired replacements for the workers almost
immediately after the strike began in October, and considers them permanent employees.
Excerpted from The Denver Post, January 29, 1998, Jim Mallory. |