BY ANDREA HOLECEK, Times of Northwest Indiana
holecek@nwitimes.com
EAST CHICAGO | ArcelorMittal is temporarily closing the specialty bar company at Indiana Harbor East beginning Sunday, likely leaving hundreds of steelworkers laid off.
"Effective (Wednesday), we have notified the (United Steelworkers) leadership that we will be ceasing plant operations for what appears to be two weeks and most likely three weeks," according to a layoff notice signed by Mike Morris, Indiana Harbor Long Products general manager. The notice was posted at the plant Wednesday.
The bar company includes an electric furnace, which makes billets from scrap steel, and the 12-inch bar mill that rolls the billets into bars. The company supplies specialty bar steel to the auto industry for axles and steering linkage, said Tom Hargrove, president of United Steelworkers Local 1010, which represents Indiana Harbor East's 3,550 hourly workers.
"We think they'll be off for at least a couple of weeks until business conditions change," he said. "Things are terrible in the auto industry right now, so it's going to affect us until conditions change."
About 450 hourly workers are at the bar company, Hargrove said, adding he doesn't know yet how many would be laid off while the bar mill is closed, how many would be transferred to other departments or how many would remain at the bar plant for safety reasons.
"During this period, we will only be able to employ a select number to carry out maintenance work, other plant services required by customers and receiving," the company's notice states.
Currently, the plant is operating at about 30 percent of its capacity with only one of its three blast furnaces producing raw steel. The plant, formerly operated as Inland Steel and Ispat Inland, has about 100 hourly workers on voluntary layoff and an additional 16 workers on involuntary layoff, Hargrove said.
The union has scheduled meeting with bar mill workers at 8 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. today at the union hall, 3703 Euclid Ave., East Chicago.
Hargrove said the steel industry is in the worst shape he has ever seen.
"It wasn't ever this bad," he said. "Not even in the '80s was it this bad -- or in 2000 when companies went under. This sets a precedent, and it's scary."
ArcelorMittal says it has done everything possible to minimize work force reductions.
"This was a difficult decision to make, but the company is being forced to respond to the extraordinary economic environment we are facing," the company said Wednesday in an e-mail to The Times.