Posts tagged Pittsburgh
Steelworkers Union Applauds as Biden Blocks Sale of US Steel to Japanese Giant
January 4, 2025 // The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a federal committee that has the power to review certain transactions involving foreign investment in the United States to evaluate a deal's impact on national security, decided to forgo making a formal recommendation about whether the deal should be allowed to proceed last week. The proposal also became ensnared in election year politics, with both presidential candidates saying that U.S. Steel should remain a domestically-owned firm. Rust Belt lawmakers in both parties, including Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)—both of whom lost re-election in November—and Vice President-elect JD Vance, an Ohio Republican, expressed opposition to the deal.
CA requires public school unionization lessons, bans mandatory anti-union work meetings
January 2, 2025 // Two new laws — AB 800, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, and now SB 399, signed into law by Newsom this year, are set to help maintain or even increase union membership in the state. AB 800, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, requires California high school juniors and seniors to be taught about their workplace rights, the achievements of organized labor, and students’ right to join a union. Education site Chalkboard News used public records requests to discover what exactly this new law is having teachers cover.
Hundreds of U.S. Steel workers rally in Clairton in support of Nippon deal
December 14, 2024 // Some speakers took aim at United Steelworkers union leaders, who have maintained opposition to the deal. USW president Dave McCall has continued to say that there aren’t enough guarantees in writing for the company’s union workers. Kurt Barshick, the vice president of U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works, said that the hundreds of workers who showed up for the rally were the true voices of the company’s union workers, and that they favored the deal. He suggested that union leadership was overly focused on a separate, less generous acquisition offer made by Cleveland Cliffs Steel.
The strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is now the longest in the nation. And it’s not over.
December 9, 2024 // Zack Tanner, the Newspaper Guild’s president, stood away from the crowd, wearing a Penguins jersey and smoking a cigar. His dog, a 103 lb. Akita named Bella, had been a little too excited by another, smaller dog in the crowd. “This has been elongated to this point solely because of the people inside,” he said. “In a labor battle, there’s strikers and there’s scabs. There’s two sides to a picket line.” As the strike has gone on, tensions between both sides have grown, and it’s unclear how or when the strike will end. On Nov. 13, the first negotiations between the Post-Gazette’s lawyers and the union in over a year ended after Tanner threw a chair at the wall of a conference room in the Omni William Penn Hotel.
On a roll: Clinic nurses and others vote to join USW
November 5, 2024 // Nearly 80 Squirrel Hill Health Center workers voted Thursday to join the United Steelworkers union, the latest victory for the Pittsburgh-based labor organization that has been expanding membership in recent years to university faculty, librarians and professional football players. The newly unionized workers serve as nurse practitioners, physician assistants, registered nurses, medical and dental assistants, therapists, front desk staff and others who work at the center’s four Pittsburgh area clinics.
Wabtec cites lost jobs in Erie as evidence that Fort Worth workers should not unionize
October 4, 2024 // In a letter to employees in Fort Worth, the company says they should consider the evidence from unionized workers at Wabtec plants in Erie and Wilmerding, near Pittsburgh. According to the letter, "Employment levels are down 58% in Erie since 2011. In Wilmerding, Wabtec's former headquarters, employment levels went from 70 employees in 2020 to just 5 remaining employees today,"
US Steel Deal ‘Doomed,’ Says Union ‘Steadfast’ in Opposition
September 13, 2024 // United Steelworkers union says it will not be bullied into accepting Nippon Steel Corp.’s last-ditch efforts to win over workers for its takeover of United States Steel Corp., calling the $14.1 billion acquisition a “doomed deal” and pledging to fight any foreign ownership of the company.
This Pennsylvania battery plant just voted to unionize—here’s why it matters
September 10, 2024 // Eos Energy has received a roughly $400 million conditional loan guarantee from the Department of Energy and has also received millions of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act’s Section 45X advanced manufacturing production tax credit, designed to incentivize production of renewable energy components such as batteries. If the company expands production as planned, Eos will be eligible for $1.98 billion in Section 45X tax credits between 2026 and 2032. Legislators framed the Inflation Reduction Act as a source of “good-paying union jobs” within the renewable energy sector. But the legislation did not require companies receiving federal funds to commit to union neutrality agreements.
Workers Say Plant Eligible for $2 Billion in Public Funds Is Union-Busting
September 4, 2024 // Eos’s Pittsburgh-area battery plant got subsidies aimed at ‘good clean jobs.’ Its workers say they’re getting fired for unionizing.
Biden, Trump battle for blue-collar voters as steel merger looms
June 30, 2024 // But Rudy Sanetta, a maintenance worker at US Steel, prefers Trump on the economy and because of his stance on gun rights. "I like him for his resistance to the politicians," Sanetta said of Trump. "The other guy, I have no confidence." Working class voters "are the most pivotal because they're the ones who have actually demonstrated that they're willing to select either Trump or Biden," said Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.