About 600 union trade workers out of work because of NWI steel slowdowns

BY ANDREA HOLECEK, Times of Northwest Indiana
holecek@nwitimes.com

HAMMOND | About 600 members of the Northwest Indiana Building and Construction Trades Council are out of work following cuts by the area's two largest steelmakers.

About a month ago, ArcelorMittal told contractors the company was eliminating almost all contractor jobs from its three area mills and replacing contract workers with its employees as it cut steel production and operations, said Chris Hernandez, the council's president.

About 215 members of Hernandez's Pipefitters Local 597 are now on the out-of-work list.

A few days after ArcelorMittal made its cuts, U.S. Steel Corp. made the same announcement, removing all but essential contractors from its Northwest Indiana mills.

"The bad part is in the summer a lot of the crafts were told at the CAF (Construction Advancement Foundation) that the mills were the places that needed more people," Hernandez said. "We've added journeymen, who we anticipated putting into the mills. We added apprenticeships and brought in boomers and travelers."

Boomers and travelers are union tradesman from outside an area brought in to temporarily fill worker shortages, often living in campers, fifth wheelers and hotels, Hernandez said.

"We had them from everywhere in the U.S." he said. "They left jobs to come here because the wages were better -- $10 to $15 an hour or better."

Then the local market went from "feast to famine," Hernandez said.

"It's three months later, and people are back (in the local union hall) here," he said. "We have an extra 150 pipefitters, and there's no place for them.

"At this point, we're saying thank goodness for the BP and Praxair projects that are going full-speed ahead," he said.

BP's Whiting Refinery has begun its almost $5.2 billion expansion project to process increased amounts of secure Canadian crude oil and increase the refinery's gasoline production by 1.7 million gallons a day. More than 400 skilled craftsmen are working on the project, and their number will increase to 1,000 workers in early 2009 and reach 2000 before 2010, the company has reported.

Praxair is building two new hydrogen plants in Whiting with a total capacity of 200 million standard cubic feet per day to supply hydrogen and steam to the BP refinery. Between 200 and 300 workers will be employed during construction of the plants, which are scheduled to start up in the second half of 2010, a company spokeswoman said Monday.