Nippon Steel Finds Unlikely Ally in Pittsburgh Workers
Kris Maher, Bob Tita and Aaron Zitner
7 min read
WEST MIFFLIN, Pa.—Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have found agreement on one issue: opposing the $14.1 billion sale of U.S. Steel, one of America’s most storied corporations, to Nippon Steel of Japan.
But outside Pittsburgh, in Monongahela River valley towns where steel is still made, some workers and officials say the rhetoric is disconnected from what is happening on the ground.
“I would bet that none of the national politicians have seen what I’ve seen and have not talked to these local workers,” said West Mifflin Mayor Chris Kelly, who works at a desk in his garage beside a plaque reading, “Hours: Anytime.” His town’s U.S. Steel mill employs 800 workers who flatten glowing slabs of steel into sheet steel that is wound into giant coils. “This is nothing but politics,” he added.
West Mifflin Mayor Chris Kelly in his home office. -
The 123-year-old company’s potential sale looks different to many who battle blight and population loss after decades of plant closings, including by U.S. Steel. Some say fears of foreign ownership are overblown and that the deal with deep-pocketed Nippon Steel offers the best chance to keep steel industry jobs in the region, and communities from being erased.
As Trump and Harris crisscross the nation’s biggest swing state, opposing the deal has come to signal their support for domestic manufacturing and concern for working-class voters.
President Biden, who has been expected to block the deal, now appears to be delaying that decision, according to a person familiar with the matter. Biden believes it is “vital that U.S. Steel is to remain an American steel company” and awaits a national-security review, a White House spokeswoman said Friday.
Harris and Trump have said U.S. Steel should remain in domestic hands. All four senators from Pennsylvania and Ohio, including Sen. John Fetterman, who lives across the street from a U.S. Steel plant, have also opposed the merger.
United Steelworkers’ leaders have fought the deal since its December announcement. The union, backing a rival offer from Ohio-based Cleveland-Cliffs, contends Nippon Steel could reduce production at U.S. Steel plants and substitute cheaper steel imported from its mills elsewhere, particularly India. It also worries about Nippon Steel honoring its existing labor contract.
U.S. Steel Chief Executive Dave Burritt recently escalated the stakes, threatening to close the company’s Mon Valley Works—three Pittsburgh-area plants employing more than 3,000 workers—if the sale collapses. Burritt added U.S. Steel’s corporate offices would likely relocate near a mill in Arkansas if Mon Valley closes.
This raises a once-unthinkable possibility: For the first time in more than a century, U.S. Steel would no longer have a presence in Pittsburgh.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump both oppose the sale of U.S. Steel to Japan’s Nippon Steel. - Associated Press
Lobbying battle
Kelly, the mayor of West Mifflin, and other local officials are asking Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to get the Biden administration to hear their concerns. A spokesman said the governor has been communicating with all parties involved and his priority is protecting Pennsylvania workers.
For Kelly, the effort transcends politics: He was the police chief in nearby Homestead when U.S. Steel closed a large mill there 40 years ago. Residents’ despair from the closure, he said, caused an uptick in suicides and addictions.
U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel have intensified lobbying. Nippon Vice Chairman Takahiro Mori recently met with U.S. regulators. Ads running in Pittsburgh urge they “keep steel jobs in steel city.”
The industry’s realities are stark in the Monongahela River valley, where much of America’s steel was once made. In the 1980s, when old mills succumbed to competition from foreign steelmakers and more efficient domestic ones, entire buildings were carted off or left to rust.
Nippon Steel has pledged to invest $2.7 billion in U.S. Steel’s older plants, including Mon Valley Works. This comes after U.S. Steel scrapped its own plan in 2021 to invest more than $1 billion there to upgrade production equipment and improve air emissions, a problem drawing millions of dollars in fines over the past decade.
In Braddock, the Edgar Thomson plant is among the world’s oldest mills, producing steel from liquid iron heated in blast furnaces. Active since 1875, it hums day and night.
Braddock Mayor Delia Lennon-Winstead backs the deal and said presidential candidates who oppose it should provide another solution. “Do they actually walk these streets and live in this area?” she said. “Do they know the devastation of closing the mill, what it would do to this area?”
U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson plant, located in Braddock, Pa., seen earlier this month. - Mayor of Braddock, Delia Lennon-Winstead, backs the deal and said presidential candidates who oppose it should propose another solution. - Homes in Braddock, Pa. -
Museums to football helmets
Pittsburgh’s bond with U.S. Steel runs deep. Founded in 1901 through a merger involving J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and other titans, it was among the first companies to reach $1 billion in market value, and long America’s largest steelmaker.
U.S. Steel’s workforce exceeded 340,000 companywide in 1943, according to studies, supporting generations of Pittsburgh families. Today, it employs about 14,000 in North America, including about 4,000 in Pennsylvania, and 7,800 abroad. Now the nation’s third-largest steelmaker, its Pittsburgh operations make sheet steel primarily for appliances, automotive and construction.
The company’s legacy permeates Pittsburgh through names of parks, museums and libraries—and on the Pittsburgh Steelers’ football helmets, which feature the three-diamond design created by U.S. Steel.
Downtown Pittsburgh’s tallest building, the U.S. Steel Tower, built with company steel, now symbolizes the rising prominence of robotics, biomedical research and AI, driven by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Today, the tower bears the logo of UPMC, the area’s big healthcare provider and insurer. “The change in Pittsburgh can be seen in the skyline,” said Chris Briem, a regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh.
Youth football players in Clairton, Pa., which receives about 30% of its tax revenue from U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works. -
‘It will take us off the map’
Clairton Mayor Rich Lattanzi, who retired after 30 years as a welder and pipe fitter at West Mifflin’s plant, said he supports the deal. He thinks union leadership will eventually come around. “It’s not going to be love at first sight,” he said. “It’s going to be a process.”
Lattanzi said his town of 6,200, down from about 20,000 in 1950, receives 30% of its tax revenue from U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works, North America’s largest coking coal plant. Its closure, he said, would “take us off the map.”
Most storefronts in the town are abandoned, with peeling paint and boarded-up windows. But Lattanzi notes improvements, such as new affordable housing and a produce market. Plans for a restaurant and two other businesses hinge on the mill’s survival, he added.
Don Furko, 50, a mechanical maintenance planner at Clairton’s plant, joined U.S. Steel in 2000, shortly after his father retired from there. After bargaining alongside union leadership, he trusts their opposition to the deal. “I’m going to back what they say.”
Others, such as Jason Zugai, 47, vice president of the steelworkers local for West Mifflin’s plant, disagree with top union brass. “We’re not on the same page as the leaders,” he said. “They’d still have jobs if the plant gets shut down.”
Dan Rojtas, a 34-year-old firefighter at that plant, hopes a deal will secure jobs and enable him to retire from the company one day. “I would much prefer to see the politics being kept out of the deal here.”
The Edgar Thomson plant in Braddock, Pa., active since 1875, is among the world’s oldest steel mills. -