Sparrows Point Steelworker history

Sparrows Point, a promontory jutting into the Chesapeake Bay east of Baltimore , MD , was named for Thomas Sparrow who received the land as a grant from Lord Baltimore in 1652. In 1887, Frederick Wood, working with an industrial combination of The Pennsylvania Steel Co. and the Bethlehem Iron Co., began the construction of the enormous works that would first become Maryland Steel and subsequently Bethlehem Steel. From its opening in 1890 until today, the works have been a major industrial producer and employer in the Baltimore area. In the 1950’s, Sparrows Point was the largest steel mill in the world, with a bargaining unit of more than 31,000 workers.
        Constantly reworking their relations with the company, the steelworkers at Sparrows Point erected their own mighty civilization, spreading from the workplace into the families and communities around Sparrows Point. From the company town of Sparrows Point, which was bulldozed in 1956 to provide room for the construction of the “L” furnace, into the Dundalk community (where one campus of The Community College of Baltimore County is located) and eventually into the Baltimore suburbs, steelworkers extended their workplace family over many generations. Issues of company paternalism, unionism, civil rights, women's rights and political power were constant issues that this civilization had to deal with, especially after The United Steelworkers of America (USWA) were voted into Sparrows Point in September, 1941.
      The global economy, once such a triumph for the steelworkers at Sparrows Point who exported steel around the world, has become—as it has for so many US manufacturing workers—a catastrophe.  In September, 2001, after reporting a loss of $ 1.2 billion for the year, Bethlehem Steel  hired Robert ”Steve” Miller who promptly put the company into Chapter 11. On October 15, 2001,   as part of the bankruptcy, the company dumped its pension liabilities on to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), and cut off health insurance for all retirees and survivors. 

Eliminating these responsibilities—coldly called “stranded costs”—made Bethlehem Steel an attractive prospect for corporate bottom-feeder Wilbur Ross, who created The International Steel Group (ISG) to scoop up a series of failing steel companies. In April 2003, Ross bought Bethlehem Steel, negotiating a controversial union contract with the USWA: this agreement

·       gutted the Basic Steel agreement that had been in effect since the 1940’s,

·       collapsed 35 job classifications into 5,

·        reduced vacation time,

·       tightened discipline

·       eliminated the defined benefit pension plan altogether,

·       offered buy-outs to thousands of workers

At the same time, Ross and Miller promised to keep the Sparrows Point plant open and assured both future investment and prosperity.

True to form, however, Ross—described in The Baltimore Sun as “a billionaire investor” (6/10/2006)  flipped all of his steel companies within an 18-month period, and sold ISG in 2005 to global steel titan Lakshmi Mittal for a profit estimated at between $118-300 million. Mittal, the Indian president who lives in London and whose corporate headquarters is located in Rotterdam , is listed in 2006 as the world’s fifth richest man by Forbes Magazine, Mittal now controls 40% of flat-rolled steel in the United States . In the summer of 2006, Mittal was desperately trying to stage a $23 billion hostile takeover the Arcelor Steel Company in Luxembourg .

True to form once again, Ross invested some of these profits into a new company, the International Coal Group (ICG), which bought up bankrupt coal companies, which had already—do you see a pattern?-- dumped their pensions and health insurance for retirees. ICG owned the non-union Sago mine in Upshur County, West Virginia where, in January, 2006, 12 miners were killed by a cave-in while the nation stood a death watch, the worst mine disaster in west Virginia since 1968. Accident rates at the mine were 4.3 times the national average, despite Ross’ claims that. he never refused money for health and safety

Steve Miller also moved on, taking his special set of skills to the Delphi Corporation, an auto parts manufacturer, which he is trying in the summer of 2006 to head to bankruptcy as a method of dumping thousands of jobs in the United States .

The global economy has drastically changed the lives and expectations of the steelworkers at Sparrows Point. At one time, the USWA represented 90% of all steelworkers in the United States and had only one challenge: to be tough enough to beat the bosses in a mano a mano struggle. Now the Sparrows Point plant produces only 3% of Mittal’s global steel production so bargaining is infinitely more complicated and dangerous as you see from this excellent article in The Baltimore Sun. [insert link to Connolly story]

The bankruptcy and sale of Bethlehem Steel in December, 2003, is a fault line in the life of every steelworker and retiree from Sparrows Point. Bethlehem Steel was the only employer most of these steelworkers ever knew, so its decline, bankruptcy, sale and revival threw their lives, the lives of their families and retirees, and the lives of the community, into depression and turmoil. The expectations of the workers were dramatically changed and the economy of the United States , and especially of eastern Baltimore County , will never be the same. For current workers, it is easily possible to make almost $100,000.00 per year, since double-shifts and continuous work are common. Yet they look ahead with foreboding to the next set of negotiations in 2008.

Life, they all say, as if in a refrain, will never be the same.

As the industry changes and the workers at Sparrows Point are tossed around, the most accurate current information can be found on the web site of Mark Reutter’s Making Steel