Pact Requires USX to Notify Union of Any Bid : Industry: The provision would enable the Steelworkers to decide whether to make their own offer for the mills and coke plants.
PITTSBURGH — The three-year contract that USX Corp. and the United Steelworkers union hammered out early Sunday includes a provision that the conglomerate notify the union if it receives a bid for its steel operation.
Union President Lynn Williams said that with 1 1/2 hours left until the midnight Sunday deadline for talks to be broken off, one issue remained on the table: the fate of union members should USX sell its steel mills, coke plants and ore mines.
“We were having an impossible time on this issue,†Williams said, so he called USX Chairman Charles Corry to hash it out.
The result was that USX agreed to inform the Steelworkers of any bid to buy the steel operation.
The union then could “analyze and determine if we want to make a bid on that property,†said Bernard Kleiman, the union’s general counsel.
USX, which also owns energy interests, on Thursday announced plans to create separate steel stock and left open the possibility the mills may be sold.
The proposed contract--announced at 1 a.m. Sunday, about an hour after the strike deadline--averted a strike by 20,000 workers. It raises pay $2.50 an hour and includes $3,250 in bonuses, said union negotiator Andrew Palm. Average base pay in the old contract was $10.84 an hour.
USX negotiator Thomas Sterling called the pact “a fair one that achieves the goal of serving the interests of the company and its people in a tough global steel market.â€
USX declined to give full details of the new contract until union members reviewed it.
Presidents of 27 locals in the Great Lakes region and Alabama could vote on the pact today or Tuesday, union officials said.
It then must be approved by the union’s international board and its members who work at USX, the nation’s largest steelmaker.
“There is still more paper work and more meetings and a lot of work to finish, but I think it’s a good agreement and the negotiators did a tremendous job,†said Don Conn, president of Local 2227 at USX’s plant in Dravosburg, Pa.
There were two 24-hour extensions of the original strike deadline of midnight Thursday.
“We knew that in those two extra days that we were boring in on something. We could smell it,†Palm said. “Anybody can strike, but we felt we could do this without striking.â€
Said Sterling: “A strike would have been costly and competitively damaging, causing deep economic hardship for our people and our company, as well as disruption in our ability to serve our customers.â€
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