GRANITE CITY, Ill. — U.S. Steel announced it would be idling steelmaking at the Granite City Works plant indefinitely.
Workers learned of the decision in an email from U.S. Steel Senior Vice President and Chief Manufacturing Officer Scott Buckiso that was sent out Tuesday morning.
As part of the decision, U.S. Steel issued approximately 1,000 employees a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice that they might be laid off and said they anticipated about 60% of those workers would likely lose their jobs.
The WARN Act requires most employers with more than 100 employees to provide notice 60 days in advance of planned closings and mass layoffs.
United Steelworkers Local 1899 President Dan Simmons said the email was the official announcement of something the union knew was coming.
The move comes two months after U.S. Steel temporarily idled furnace B in a move it called "risk mitigation" in response to the now-resolved United Auto Workers strike. At the time, Simmons said they weren’t feeling the effects of the United Auto Workers strike and it would take months and more locations going on strike for it to affect them.
In Tuesday's email, Buckiso said the company could meet demand with other active iron and steelmaking facilities. He said the rolling and finishing lines in Granite City would continue to run using slabs from other facilities.
"They're claiming there is still some low volume yet, hasn't increased where they want it to be. But the price of steel is in good shape right now," Simmons said.
"I don't see how they can not make the right decision, do the right thing and start us back up at full operation," he said.
In June of 2022, U.S. Steel told the Pittsburgh Business Times, a sister publication to the St. Louis Business Journal, that it planned to sell two blast furnaces at its big Granite City, Illinois, facility. The company said the sale of the blast furnaces would result in an estimated 550 jobs remaining out of 1,500 at Granite City Works.
To circumvent the 60-day worker adjustment and retraining notification or warn act requirement, Simmons said they should have given them a notice back in September when the plant went idle.
"The fact that they were using less than six months of a plant idle, they are looking at it at this point going forward whether they can satisfy that requirement or not," Simmons said. "This is their way to kind of cover their butts on the 60-day requirement. Give us this notification now. The idle could go on longer than the six months they originally thought."
"In September I believe U.S. Steel circumvented the WARN Act," Granite City Congressional Rep. Nikki Budzinski said. "They said at that time they were making an announcement of 400 layoffs immediately because this was temporary. By saying it was temporary, they did not have to give the mandatory 60 days notice to those workers."
In a statement on Nov. 28, U.S. Steel says they did not take these notices or possible layoffs lightly. About 600 workers who receive a WARN notice over the next few days may be affected as early as late January.
"The reality is that 1,000 workers potentially got notice that they could be laid off," Budzinski said. "That is the fact."
As part of the plan, the plant would be sold to a company called SunCoke Energy. SunCoke would use the blast furnaces to produce a type of crude iron called pig iron.