AK Steel's Ad Campaign: Lies and Guinea Pigs
Throughout the UAW’s organizing campaign and right up until the Sept. 19 election, propaganda flowed like molten steel from the company’s union busters.
In a now infamous full-page newspaper ad, the company asked, “Just what has this autoworker union ever accomplished in the steel business?”
The company claimed that UAW-represented Rouge Steel was a “failed experiment in the steel industry” and “now apparently teeters on the brink of bankruptcy.”
The UAW countered with a comparison of wages and benefits for workers at the AK Steel’s Coshocton mill and the UAW’s negotiated agreement for its 2,600 workers at the Dearborn, Mich., facility.
To refute the company’s lies, organizers invited UAW Local 600 representatives — who negotiated the Rouge Steel contract — to attend Coshocton workers’ membership meetings and answer questions.
“The union told us the truth,” one worker said.
Guinea pigs?
The newspaper ads that made workers’ average annual earnings public and called them “guinea pigs” for the union weren’t taken lightly either.
“My wife was very upset about the newspaper ads, even more than I was. She thought it was terrible that they published our salaries,” said Charles Wright, 54, a water treatment operator for 20 years.
Don Rushing added that in order to earn the reported $60,500, they worked six or seven days a week on a swing shift, and also received a bonus.
“And that salary included 500 hours of overtime a year,” he
said.
Tom Priest worked 89 days in a row last year.
“You just do it,” said Priest, a 52-year-old maintenance worker.
