The Steelworkers & the Beginning of the End of the U.S. Steel Industry
After many years of numerous and pitched battles to unionize workers in the steel industry, the United Steel Workers of America* was officially founded in 1942 as a result of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers and the Steel Workers Organizing Committee merging. However, the USWA's rise to power and control over the U.S. steel industry was fast and short lived.
To end the strike, President Dwight Eisenhower invoked back-to-work provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act but not before irreparable harm was done to the U.S. steel industry.
As a result of the strike, producers who relied on steel to manufacture goods began to find alternative sources of steel from other countries. Once foreign competition entered the America's steel marketplace, this was the beginning of the end for the bulk of the unionized steel industry in America.
While, for a time, the USWA negotiated strong wages and heavily-priced benefits for its members, the costs of its contracts reduced the companies' flexibility and the needed capital to invest in new technologies for the companies to maintain their ability to compete with foreign-made steel.
Over the years, as older, more inefficient steel mills continued to close, thousands and thousands of union members were thrown into the abyss of unemployment, while other, more efficient (and largely union-free) mini-mills sprung up. Indeed, according to the Cato Institute, the number of employed steelworkers fell by 60% from around 400,000 to 160,000 between 1980 and 1999.
For the United Steelworkers, union membership in the steel industry has been decimated and the union has merged with smaller and weaker unions in order to maintain its membership base. [For more on the USW's mergers, go here.]
* Formerly known as the United Steel Workers of America, the union has apparently dropped "of America" from its name. The union is now commonly known as the United Steel Workers. The reason for the deletion of "America" from its name is unknown but it may be attirbutable to the union's 2008 announced merger with the British union Unite.
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