Striking ATI workers rally outside Canton plant
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
Striking workers gather outside the ATI plant in Canton Township Thursday afternoon.
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
A display set up for a rally of striking ATI workers in Canton Township Tuesday.
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
Dave Ferguson, a Pittsburgh resident who sympathizes with striking ATI employees, holds up a sign at a rally outside the Canton Township ATI plant Tuesday.
“Go ahead and try to put me in jail!” Nancy Bell yelled outside the gates of the Washington plate mill of Allegheny Technologies Inc. (ATI) late Tuesday afternoon.
“Shame on you!” she added.
Bell is one of roughly 1,300 members of the United Steelworkers who have been on strike since the end of March, at loggerheads with management of the specialty metals manufacturer over wages and health care coverage. Employees of the plant gathered outside the Canton Township facility to show solidarity and continue to press the demands that have kept them off the job and on the picket line.
Bell, a Washington resident, explained that the company “has consistently used unfair labor practices.” Since the beginning of the strike, the company has been using replacement workers. This is ATI’s first strike in 27 years.
Randy Denman Jr., unit president of Local 7139-5 of the United Steelworkers, said the company needs its longtime employees who know how to operate specialized equipment, and he and his fellow strikers are concerned that the replacement workers “are going to destroy” the plant.
“Nobody does what we do,” Denman said.
He said the union submitted an offer to management May 6 and has not received a response. The two main sticking points are job security for Office & Technical employees and health care costs. Denman said the company has offered to give the employees a raise, but only if they give up their profit-sharing plan and pay health care premiums. Denman explained that he has had to pay thousands of dollars in co-pays and deductibles in recent years, and did not have a raise to offset it.
“We want to let ATI know we’re not going anywhere,” Denman added.
Along with the Canton plant, ATI workers are also on strike at locations in Latrobe, Natrona Heights, Vandergrift and Brackenridge. Employees affiliated with the United Steelworkers at four other ATI plants outside Pennsylvania are also on strike.
Natalie Gillespie, a spokeswoman for ATI, said by email that the company’s offer includes a lump sum bonus and a 9% wage increase spread out over four years. She also said employees earn about $85,000 annually under the contract, and the union expects the company to “absorb the full cost of unchecked medical inflation, on top of a plan that is already more generous” than what other American workers receive.
“It’s now Day 80 of the strike and no one is winning – not ATI, not our employees, not our customers,” Gillespie said.
She also denied the company has broken any laws.