Joining the UAW helped UAW Local 3303 President Jerry Ehrman, left, and other Butler workers not only in the production of steel, but in the protection of wages, benefits, health and safety, and workplace rights.

It’s common for automotive suppliers that want to keep a union out to try to scare workers with phony stories about how they’ll lose business if workers join the UAW.

Frightening Anti-Union Scenario No. 1 goes like this: “Our nonunion customers will not want to do business with companies with a UAW-represented workforce, so you should vote no.”

This horror story doesn’t hold up on close examination – as anyone can find out with a visit to AK Steel in Butler, Pa. Workers there have been manufacturing stainless steel to the exacting specifications of nonunion companies such as Toyota and Honda for years.

Workers at the 1,300-acre western Pennsylvania plant have had an independent union since 1933. They voted to join the UAW in 2003. According to the above scenario, Honda and Toyota would soon pull out and find a new non-UAW supplier, right?

Wrong.

Honda, Toyota and others stayed because they know Local 3303 members at AK Steel are world-class workers making the world-class steel they need.

“The bottom line is if we don’t have quality, we don’t have customers and we don’t have jobs,” said Keith Vensel, a quality control coordinator who started at AK Steel in 1973.

“It’s a great workforce. You couldn’t get a better workforce,” said Vensel, who is responsible for inspections and labs. “They are concerned about what they do, care about what they do and want to do a good job.”

In fact, so good of a job that AK Steel was the only steel company in the world to receive one of Toyota Motor Corp.’s four inaugural Regional Contribution Awards. The criteria for a supplier to be considered for the award include having previously received Toyota’s Superior performance award for a minimum of three years.

Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America Inc. (TMMNA) has also recognized the quality work that the 1,266 UAW-represented Butler workers perform, including winning awards in 11 consecutive years and the Superior award in seven consecutive years.

AK Steel, a Fortune 500 company with plants in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, manufactures flat-rolled carbon, stainless and electrical steel products, as well as carbon and stainless tubular steel products for the automotive, appliance, construction and manufacturing markets.

UAW Local 3462 represents 345 workers at its Coshocton, Ohio, facility; Local 4104 represents 213 workers at its Zanesville, Ohio, plant, while 190 Rockport, Ind., workers are represented by Local 3044. Officials from these UAW locals meet once a month to discuss their common problems and interests.

Electrical and stainless steel melting and casting, hot and cold rolling, and finishing operations are housed in 3.5 million square feet of buildings at Butler. AK Steel supplies flat-rolled steels used in every Toyota vehicle manufactured in North America. Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda and Toyota automakers’ representatives are often onsite to ensure their exacting standards are being met.

“They come in pretty frequently,” said Sharon Marsh, a quality control coordinator responsible for the cold mill, roll grinding, cold mill maintenance, electrical finishing, electrical shipping and material movement areas. “They are in there to make sure we have control over our product.”

Maintaining control over the product, the quality control coordinators say, involves an avalanche of paperwork and a list of acronyms that resembles a bowl of alphabet soup: You have your ISO9001, your ISO/TS 16949 certification and registration under ISO 14001, not to mention your DPs (Department Specific Procedures, your QSOPS (Quality Standard Operating Procedures), the QSMPs (Quality Standard Maintenance Procedures) and a litany of others.

A lot of what they do is document control: making sure the correct paperwork is filled out completely and accurately. Missing or incomplete documents can lead to a mill losing registrations or certifications. That can lead to lost customers. And that can lead to where no one wants to go.

“Re-registration is very important to the industry,” Vensel said. “If they are not certified to that standard, they will not buy that product.”

But don’t get the idea that Local 3303 members spend their days mired in paperwork. They are highly trained, skilled and dedicated workers who are out near one of the mill’s three, 175-ton arc furnaces or at the world’s largest argon-oxygen decarburization (AOD) unit, or in one of the many mills, labs, boilers and countless other areas, getting their hands dirty as they make sure what goes out the door is the highest quality product possible.

“Their hands are in everything,” said Local 3303 Vice President Brian Cossitor.

Which brings us to
Frightening Anti-Union Scenario No. 2: “You’ll have ‘people from Detroit’ in here telling us how to do our business.”

In fact, the reality in the mill at Butler – and on hundreds of plant floors represented by the UAW – is far different. Involvement and input at the local level is key, Butler workers say.

“We still run our own program here,” Vensel said. “We’re a very specialized plant.”

Butler’s quality coordinators, selected jointly by the local and management, ensure that they have a say in how the work is done at Butler. They recognize potential problems, report them to management and then help come up with solutions.

That’s not to say there aren’t conflicts between the local and management at the plant. Joining the UAW helped Butler workers not only in the production of steel, but in the protection of wages, benefits, health and safety, and workplace rights. The facility is serviced by a UAW representative based in Butler, with additional support on bargaining, health and safety, legal issues, and other areas as needed to secure solid workplace representation.

Some problems, according to Local 3303 President Jerry Ehrman, are resolved without going through the time and expense of arbitration.

“We still run our day-to-day operations, but anytime we have something major we make a phone call and the UAW is right there,” Ehrman said. “We do get a lot of stuff accomplished. There’s a lot of assistance from the resources of the UAW and Region 9,” which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey and western New York.

Health and safety is always an issue at any workplace, and a steel plant has heavy equipment and high-temperature operations that can quickly become dangerous if proper procedures are not followed. Seven UAW-represented safety coordinators work hard to make sure the company’s procedures, as well as state and federal laws, are carried out.

“We’re required to make sure procedures are correct and hazards are recognized,” said Dale Fennel, a safety coordinator with 15 years’ seniority.

Safety coordinators are the liaison between union and company. Nearly all of the coordinators have been to the Walter and May Reuther UAW Family Education Center in Onaway, Mich., for training.

“The latest technology is really what I get out of it,” said Bruce Thoma, a safety coordinator with 23 years on the job. “We talk about safety outside the mill as well.”

Ehrman added the company isn’t shy about spending the money to ensure that it has a top-flight safety program. Butler was the first steel plant in the nation to receive the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s “Star” safety designation, the highest under its Voluntary Protection Program.

Members also participate in the UAW’s Community Action Program, in which they use their own money to support candidates who support working families, such as the district’s new congresswoman, Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper.

The lawmaker added Local 3303’s CAP chairman, Rick McPherson, to her labor advisory board, a move that helps the local stay abreast of legislation affecting workers and the steel industry.

“We previously had 20 years of a congressman who wasn’t very labor friendly,” McPherson said.

Local 3303 members are active in the community. Among the outreach efforts it participates in, members earlier this year provided free tickets to needy children so they could watch the Butler Blue Sox minor league baseball team.

“We try to do a lot for the community,” Ehrman said. “Some of these kids would have been unable to go to a baseball game, and our members chipped in.”

AK Steel workers are always ready to help other workers. Members have walked picket lines to support local teachers and recently used its UAW chaplains to provide outreach to unemployed workers.

But the main focus is to make sure AK Steel secures the future of its own workers by continuing to produce world-quality steel and maintaining a decent standard of living in Butler.

“Everybody has that same feeling,” said quality coordinator John Lasichak, a 13-year worker responsible for the melt shop and refractory services. “It’s a family down here.”

Vince Piscopo