U.S. Steel workers in Western Pa. unsure what Nippon deal means for local mills, their future

Third-generation steelworker Don Jackson said he’s seen how mill owners weathering an economic downturn can cripple a city.

In Pittsburgh in 1984, a year after Jackson graduated from high school, J&L Steel shuttered the 140-year-old South Side mill that sat just a mile from Jackson’s Arlington home. At its peak, the mill employed about 8,500 people.

At 6:30 a.m. Monday, the millwright at U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock began wondering about his own future after his cellphone beeped with a stock notification: Japan’s Nippon Steel announced it planned to acquire U.S. Steel in a deal valued at $14.9 billion.

“This resonates very deeply with me,” said Jackson, 58, of Ben Avon. “Steel is in our blood. It’s not just what we do. It’s who we are.”

Jackson said layoffs or an idled mill, even in the long term, could affect him directly. When his United Steelworkers union’s contract expires at the end of 2026, Jackson will have four years remaining before he qualifies for his pension.

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“Am I enthused about ownership leaving the United States? No,” said Jackson, who worked at Union Electric Steel’s Harmon Creek plant in Washington County before coming to U.S. Steel in 2012. “But, I think time will tell what Nippon Steel is and what their intentions are.”

After Monday’s unexpected announcement, Jackson joined several concerned steelworkers at the Union Steelworkers’ Local 1219 union hall on Braddock Avenue, a modest one-story building dwarfed by the nearby Edgar Thomson Works.

Reaction from the United Steelworkers’ leadership Downtown was swift.

“To say we’re disappointed in the announced deal between U.S. Steel and Nippon is an understatement, as it demonstrates the same greedy, shortsighted attitude that has guided U.S. Steel for far too long,” United Steelworkers President David McCall said in a prepared statement.

McCall expressed concerns about a foreign company owning the iconic Pittsburgh business, which officials said will retain its name and keep its headquarters in the region.

Union leadership also questioned whether the Japanese steelmaker is capable of living up to its contractual obligations with workers, including funding pension and retiree insurance benefits.

Several Pennsylvania politicians, including Democratic U.S. Sens. Bob Casey of Scranton and John Fetterman of Braddock and U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio of Aspinwall, echoed those concerns.

“Our region knows all too well what it’s like to get screwed over, to see our hard work tossed aside and our good union jobs shipped overseas by corporate executives and Wall Street chasing cheap labor and fatter profits,” Deluzio said.

Michael Evanovich started working at Edgar Thomson Works when he was 20, a couple of years after graduating from South Alle­gheny High School in 1997. Today the president of United Steelworkers Local 1219, Evanovich wasn’t entirely surprised by Monday’s news.

“This is what our CEO does — broken promises,” Evanovich, 44, of Elizabeth Township, said as he sat near a blast furnace mural in the union hall. “Am I happy about it? No. We took a company that made it for 150 years and sold it to the highest bidder. There’s no more American pride.”

Evanovich, whose local represents 583 union employees, feels changes at U.S. Steel could be forthcoming.

“Why would you buy a company and keep everybody on?” he asked. “It could be better, it could be the same, it could be worse. We just don’t know.”

Like some in union leadership, Chad Cramer, who boasts four generations of steelworkers in his family, expressed concern about what a foreign owner might do in the face of economic uncertainty.

Four of Cramer’s uncles worked in Pittsburgh steel mills in the 1980s; three struggled to find work when ownership idled or closed the operations. One who was afraid of heights, Cramer remembered, started working as a roofer, the only job he could find.

“I definitely don’t want to be one of those stories,” said Cramer, 40, of New Stanton, who has worked at Edgar Thomson for more than 15 years.

Cramer said he found out about the deal through alerts on his cellphone.

“I can’t say I’m surprised the company didn’t let the employees know first,” Cramer said. “We’ve seen in Pittsburgh the ups and downs. The steel industry rides that wave. I hope and pray (Nippon) puts some money into it.”

Cramer said “chit-chat” about the sale filled the mill’s ladle shop, where he works, and much of the plant.

“Working at Edgar Thomson, I can tell you this. There’s a lot of pride in that mill, there’s a lot of people who like working there,” he said. “Now, there’s fear. This is an acquisition and you don’t know what’s going to happen. There are a lot of guys nervous about it, and a lot of people just shocked.”

Jackson and Cramer, as well as the president of Local 1219, started their U.S. Steel careers working on the blast furnace at Edgar Thomson Works, an assignment they called a rite of passage.

A sign nearby identified the furnace space as the “House of Pain,” Jackson remembered. He called the slag run, where a calcium- and silicate-based product is separated from lava-like molten iron, “60 feet of hell.”

“It’s intense, world’s worst job ever,” Evanovich said. “Very prehistoric, very fire and brimstone.”

The announcement Monday about the U.S. Steel sale also made several steelworkers reconnect with generations that preceded them in the industry.

Jackson’s father, a U.S. Navy veteran and retired steelworker, called his son Monday morning to make sure he was making a run to the union hall.

“My dad didn’t have to tell me, ‘Are you going to go to the hall?’” Jackson said. “I knew that this is the place I’m supposed to be.”

A source called Evanovich, whose father-in-law toiled in steel mills for 30 years, around 6 a.m., just before U.S. Steel issued its statement about the sale.

“It’s about to get ugly today,” the caller warned him.