Granite City mill could make steel early next month
United States Steel Corp. will recall nearly half of its Granite City work force in the next few weeks, and steel production could start early next month, a union official said late Friday.
The steelmaker tried this week to get about 590 workers processed to return to work, said Dan Simmons, president of United Steelworkers Local 1899, who represents most hourly workers at the facility. That’s on top of about 100 workers recalled this week.
Simmons wasn’t sure how many workers were processed by late Friday or a total number of those who had started work in the plant this week.
This marks yet another swift, positive step for Granite City Works, where steel production has been idled since December because of plunging steel demand. Just a week ago, local union officials said U.S. Steel told them it would begin preparing the facility to reopen.
"It’s a great step in the right direction," Simmons said. "It’s a good chaos … the more, the merrier."
U.S. Steel spokeswoman Erin DiPietro declined to comment.
Preparations to return to work include physicals and safety classes for the workers, Simmons said.
Including the recalls starting last week, about 800 workers will be processed and able to work by the end of next week, Simmons estimated.
Additional workers will return in the following weeks, until U.S. Steel believes it has enough people for steelmaking, Simmons said. He wasn’t sure what that number will be.
Some workers have started preparing a blast furnace to go online, said Jason Chism, president of USW Local 50, which represents workers in the coke and iron-making facility.
The blast furnace is an important part of the steelmaking process. Coke, iron ore and lime are fed into a blast furnace to extract iron, the basic ingredient for steel. The molten iron, with other ingredients, is used to make raw steel pay day loans.
Simmons said the target date for sending molten iron to the steelmaking operations is July 8.
The restart schedule is a welcome relief for workers at Granite City Works, one of Granite City’s largest employers.
The location makes steel used in construction, automobiles and other industries. When the recession and tough credit conditions hurt those industries, demand for steel plummeted.
U.S. Steel and other steel companies idled plants, laid off workers and slashed production. At Granite City Works, U.S. Steel halted its steelmaking operations in December and laid off about 1,600 workers.
An additional 390 union and nonunion workers were laid off in February. That’s when U.S. Steel temporarily stopped production of coke, a key steelmaking ingredient that it had been stockpiling.
In recent months, a crew of fewer than 100 workers has worked at the plant.
Other plants — not only those owned by U.S. Steel but also its competitors — have been idled, too. Capacity utilization, or how much the industry actually produces versus what it has the ability to produce, has been around 48 percent in recent weeks, according to data from the American Iron and Steel Institute in Washington.
It hovered around 90 percent in June 2008.
Simmons said he didn’t know a timetable for recalling all 2,000 or so workers at the plant.
"It’s a lot of questions yet," he said. "There’s a whole lot I can’t really answer."
But the news has alleviated fears of workers who worried when — or even if — Granite City Works would reboot.