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Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today was an important day in our fight to protect the domestic steel industry.
Our union communicated with the White House about our ongoing work enforcing our contracts with U.S. Steel (USS) and our national security concerns regarding the proposed sale to Nippon.
We received personal assurances that President Joe Biden has our backs. He’s long demonstrated his commitment to American workers and our union, and we’re grateful for his close attention to this situation.
GRIEVANCE MEETING YIELDS LITTLE PROGRESS
Today we also had our second-step meeting with USS to discuss grievances we filed last month alleging that the company violated the successorship clause of our contracts in a number of ways when it entered into a sales agreement with an affiliate of Nippon Steel Corporation in December.
As expected, USS showed little interest in solving problems, and indicated that it will deny the grievances when it provides its second-step answer.
Nippon Steel is a global corporation based in Tokyo. But, instead of taking responsibility for our contracts, Nippon has decided that its Houston-based holding company, Nippon Steel North America (NSNA), will assume our labor, pension, retiree benefits, and other agreements if this transaction, in fact, closes.
Nippon Steel obviously set up this transaction to benefit only itself, and USS went along with this. Our successorship clause protects us against having our contracts pushed down to subsidiary companies.
Unlike USS today, NSNA does not report its financial results publicly, leaving us with no proof of NSNA’s financial wherewithal to meet its obligations to active and retired USW members. Meanwhile, Nippon Steel has offered us little more than empty promises that NSNA will stand behind these contractual commitments.
We bargained a contract with USS, one that protects us in this very situation, and we expect its management to live up to the agreement we both signed. Instead David Burritt and other top management are more interested in cashing in and selling out. Unfortunately, it looks like we can expect more of the same from Nippon.
We will continue to keep you updated as we move forward.
Mike Millsap
District 7 Director & Chairman of the Negotiating Committee
David McCall
International President