Just a few years ago I met a man who once worked for US Steel. He started working for them around age 20. He retired 18 years later at age 38. Not put on disability, he retired. He was supposed to retire at 20 years, but for a reason I don’t remember, it was 18. I lost that part of the conversation because I was so focused on the fact that he retired at 38 and that he was then 94 years old. Yes, 94. And had COL increases along with 100% paid medical insurance all those years. You can imagine my reaction.
When a big company restructures/downsizes and they have a pension plan, it's not uncommon for workers to get a buyout offer which includes early access to drawing the pension, in exchange for a lower pension payout.
Such pensions did not disappear, they were stolen. The pensions that you and I are owed instead go into the hands of the 1% who never do any real work, physical or mental. Btw, executives don't do any real work. The closest they come to that is handing work off for others to do.
In order to retire as a contract employee you must reach a rule of 85. Which is a combination of years of service and age. If you are 55 with 30 years of service you can retire, with a reduced pension and healthcare coverage. The healthcare coverage is only for the rest of the contract retired under. Any of these stories about union steelworkers living on easystreet after a wonderfully short working career is propaganda. I know first hand, many of my coworkers retired in their mid to late sixties with many health difficulties from the environment and working conditions one has to deal with in an integrated mill. Anyone who retired with less than twenty years was likely a manager, or one of a handful out of tens of thousands employees.
unions always oppose change unless it employs more union members. look at the recent east coast port strike. they want to eliminate any automation. unions need to learn if they oppose modernization that eventually the entire company dies and they lose all the jobs.
@@ronblack7870well automation leads to cutting jobs and skilled labor and the union dissolves as a result anyways because nobody is hiring for that job anymore. May as well lobby for yourselves cause the gravy train is coming to an end either way.
@@giantninja9173 Before NAFTA was even signed, the political leadership of the US, EU, Canada, and Mexico knew that all their various governments would need to coordinate massive programs to ensure Mexican farmers and American factory workers didn't totally lose out. Instead, we got mass migration, wiping out skilled trades & factory unions alike in the US. After the 2008 crisis, a massive infrastructure rebuild was suggested. We got less than half. Now half the workforce retired and the rest are sick & disabled. America needed to plan for automation & economic change. We need healthcare, education, and housing. Instead we get quarterly profits and the few who have lots of stocks or land or a business are wealthy.
@@ronblack7870 Yep. Unions would do better at working for retraining and expansion to keep workers employed, not at stopping automation. Eventually automation will come, as the coal workers have seen over the past 100 years - by fighting automation, Union members are ensuring they will be left by the side of the road one way or another. Yes, I've had family members working in coal mines and part of UMWA, others at UAW, Teamsters, etc. When done right, Unions are great - essential for workers to have enough power for a seat at the table and can offset the often overwhelming power of Capital. When Unions are mobbed up or otherwise compromised, they're not. Germany has a great model for unions - the Union generally gets seats on the company Board of Directors.
Why didn't they consider it to be critically important to keep up on the latest technology? If you don't keep up with the changes you get replaced like the horse breeders and stagecoach drivers were.
Your miissing a other side , I was in America about 27 years ago and I had a small manufacturing buisness and all of a sudden all the suppliers of A-588 steel hit me with a $70,000 dollar miniumum order AND a $1500 charge to write a receipt ! I told one of the steel sales men "your putting me out of buisness" and he said "we are doing this specifically to put small companies like yours out of buisness" It was not just steel , but steel was the worst.
I am old enough to have lived through all of this and been distraught as the industry fell apart in the 1975s. I never completely understood why this happened. Thank you for the explanation. It should be sold to the Japanese. I believe it would bring some jobs back to the US. Thank you.
I'm young enough to have been completely oblivious but, after reading incessantly about it for a month, can understand a fraction of how devastating this must've been for many Americans. Thanks for watching!
@@jonathanjones3126 Similar to the recent potential dock strike, the union wouldn't accept new technology that would reduce employment, and I imagine the harbors are not being run as efficiently as others around the world. It's always complicated. Elon Musk is controversial, but SpaceX makes Boeing and NASA look bloated and poorly run.
@mindreader nasa doesn't build anything really just hand out contracts. Boeing destroyed itself with penny pinching managers who cut corners until their was nothing left
7:12 Sunk cost fallacy... Just because you have spent a lot of money in the past, doesn't change what you should buy in the future. US Steel could have created Basic Oxygen or Electric Arc refineries and shifted employees to work there. They chose not to do the rational step of buying the future.
There's a new kid on the block...using elemental hydrogen and iron ore. Burn the hydrogen in a retort with iron ore and you wind up with...steel. Nop coal. No limestone. We'll see. Armco Steel in Hamilton Ohio is involved.
Well, unions did push for retention of workers and continued use of old systems. So, US Steel's corporate self-interest was running against both unions and it's own complacency.
@@GregConquest lol they had plenty of time and power to make their own decisions if they truly wanted to. Union power was only ever significant for a very short period of time. Though the decline has been slow and drawn out, for most of the past several decades union opposition has been little of an obstacle to executive authority.
The irony.. pun? of the sunk-cost fallacy for many situations is they don't understand sunk costs. It's an investment. I can purchase a car and use it to save me money by not paying large amounts for public transportation in the country side, but at some point it's cheaper to replace the car again when it's outlived its use. The less clear case is when you haven't paid off the sunk-cost and trying to determine if the opportunity cost of holding on to the original investment is worth it.
Got a source for that? Most German (and Japanese) industry was destroyed by 1945. One difference is Germans and Japanese are famous for caring about quality and efficiency. Marshall Plan aid won those conquests to Western-style economics but it was THEIR workers who did the actual rebuilding of their countries. Easy to see why since German and Japanese factories in the US are also highly productive using American workers. The US had plenty of money but ignored modern concepts of quality (W. Edwards Deming is a hero in Japan but was ignored in the US for much longer). American businesses exist only to enrich stockholders, not preserve anything long term.
The funny thing is that germanys steel production didn't decline during the war. The cities where destroyed but the steel production was protected by aa and put underground and suffered little to no damage, so what's your point? 1939 23kt 1943 20kt 1944 19kt
Ive always wanted to know how they get carbon into steel at these quantities? Do they just chuck carbon into the molten metal? Because in my mind that would surely just burn off and form CO2…How does it work?
@@polymorphus1 nah bro the difference between Iron and steel is about 2% carbon, the guy who patented the modern way to make steel (by adding carbon) was Rockefeller. The Jewish industrialist. I think what you are referring to is sulphur (which deteriorates steel quality)
@@jean-pierrevandermerwe7604your information is simply wrong, you make steel by removing carbon from molten iron. Bessemer was the first to produce cheap steel by injecting air into molten iron. The air burned the carbon. And Rockefeller was a american christian with dutch heritage.
@@jean-pierrevandermerwe7604 Sulphur does have some nasty effects, but that’s not what’s going on here. I do some research with pipeline steels for my thesis, and I can assure you that carbon levels are almost always less than 0.1wt% in the final product - you pretty much always need to take the carbon out if you’re starting from iron ore
Even Nucor is relying on protectionism to thrive. Its process are behind competitors and US isn't investing on Hydrogen furness, so we're creating the new US Steel too
@@brunsy1990 It's for reducing the iron oxide ore into elemental iron. As long as you use the right amount all the hydrogen is consumed in the reaction, combining with the oxygen to form dry steam as an exhaust gas. The resulting elemental iron then goes into the EAF along with other feedstocks for steelmaking.
The other thing not mentioned is demand, demand is higher in Asia because they're building more cars, skyscrapers, railways, boats. Even with all else equal you couldn't ship steel from the mid west to south east Asia and beat them on price.
On that same theme, state and federal spending on infrastructure (as a percent of budget) also plummeted about the same time. Yes, sheet metal was the most profitable, but it was that rebar and structural steel sold by the gigaton to build bridges, skyscrapers, parking garages, and the rest that kept the lights on for the big players in the US. Since our tax dollars are now being sopped up by paying for people who aren't working, we're not investing in our nation's future in the same way that growing nations in Asia are.
@@FrankDyke "Since our tax dollars are now being sopped up by paying for people who aren't working" Or is that money now flowing into the pockets of big corporations and their billionaire owners thanks to the tax-cuts for the rich and big business? The US is doing a lot of socialism for the rich these days...
Yeah, they can ship here, but we can’t ship there. See the Jones Act for why. There’s lots of reasons for most big failures, but we humans are always going to blame the things that fit our biases.
@@FrankDyke Too many people fail to realize the burden social security and Medicaid/Medicare are to society. Their budget is twice that of the military and one hundred times that of NASA. People say that those programs are important, and I'd agree, but they're too expensive for them to be worth it. It's like spending the entire Iraq war every year and a half.
There would be a lot more demand for steel in the US if it was a country that put proper priority on replacing old infrastructure and keeping it up to date. An example is that when the steel beams that hold up a bridge have holes rusted through them, replacing the bridge is long overdue.
Used to know a woman whose husband was a VP at Bethlehem Steel. She would mention as often as possible, and you could tell she thought this made her the next best thing to royalty. This was in the 1980’s when everyone knew they really weren’t that big of a deal anymore. Once a job at a company is a status symbol, it’s usually on the way down.
@@nathancourtney94 A job is supposed to be an equal exchange of labor for money. If a particular job is super coveted, then that's a sign that the exchange is not actually equal - that people are getting paid more than their labor is actually worth.
The issue of iron ore is not addressed here. the ore coming out of Australia is far richer than here, providing an advantage to the steel companies that are using this source.
it isn’t stubbornness. the companies actually played the game right with the union. companies agree to demands to avoid strike. short-term resolved. technology to make steel changes dramatically requiring far, far less workers. long-term, you won’t need the workers-and there is no way around that reality. the companies and unions managed the short-term incentives together. reality eventually caught up with them.
Giving into union demands wasn't playing the game right. Unions saw all the profit and selfishly demanded a large chunk of it. USS should have kept back a larger share of their profits to reinvest in new technology. The unions specifically didn't want USS to adapt new technology because it meant more efficiency and thus fewer employees. USS took the easy way out and it cost them everything.
@@jeremiahvandoren7820 Both company and union followed the short-term incentives. nothing stubborn or greedy about that. it’s hard to say what would happen if the company retrofitted the plants, or closed them to build new ones. but likely a devastating strike. Everyone who worked in these plants from the 1960# on new how grossly inefficient and unsustainable they were. Take a look at Weirton Steel. They solved the greedy/stubborn management problem by employees taking over the plant. Results? Mass layoffs over time, become more efficient, sell the plant. Gone. Weirton hung on a bit longer but ultimately came to the same end.
@@jeremiahvandoren7820 The workers saw all the money they were making the executives and wanted a better share of what their labor produced? Must be so selfish of them
The algorithm led me here with the thumbnail, stayed for the brilliant writing, flawless delivery, and a bit of well done dry humor and snark. Part of me thinks she just covered this topic to show off her bougie Stanley Cup /s subbed! (with notifications on!)
The USA isn’t in a position to compete in manufacturing because of high wages. Steel workers in India and China get the equivalent of USD 2400 a year and I think I overestimated it. It’s sometimes half of this amount.
Open Hearths are gas-fired and convert molten iron from blast furnaces into steel. No one uses them today because basic oxygen furnaces are better, or melting scrap metal in electric arc furnaces. Coke is used in steel production, not coal!
@@greghight954 Yes there is coke made from coal in fact the process to make coke from coal is about the same as making charcoal from wood a low as possible oxygen environment is needed to make coke.
In the 90s, I had a chance to visit a re-milling plant in Ohio and also a POSCO plant in South Korea. At the the POSCO steel, producing 30+ times of coiled steel than the amount of the plant in Ohio, I saw less then 10 operators in the fully automatic plant. The plant in Ohio had over 150 employees per shift. Labor cost in the Ohio plant would make it un-competitable.
Unions are a bandaid solution. Instead we should have companies beg people to join them, instead of the other way around. Unions also should be forced to compete with other unions, so a Union cant just destroy a company by dragging it down and keeping it behind competitors.
Nucor was a skimming the cream. You still need furnaces to make fresh production steel and lower wage countries do it cheaper. Several countries subsidize their steel makers so few private companies can compete against that.
You can use EAF to make semi-fresh production steel. Still need scrap for bulking, but current Chinese EAFs can process a mix of 40% iron ore and 60% scrap to make most steel types. Also, some of the Chinese plants are super-integrated to the point that they can run a three-stage process. BOFs process ore, heat capture from the BOF section is then used to generate electricity to power the EAFs and the mills (and rest of plant), and the mill can run independently with only coal, ore, and scrap feed.
The real advantage other countries have is that they either directly fund the upgrading of processes or incentivise them through subsidies and tax breaks. Something that the US has only just got back into doing. Protectionism much like a large monopoly generally leads to stagnation.
@@andrewsuryali8540 Also, if integrated properly, you can use the fresh raw molten iron from a normal furnace, haul it right to the electrofurnace, and fuel that furnace (which had some scrap to heat it up already) with still quite hot steel, so you don't need to smelt it from solid cold again.
Great presentation . I like . I had a boiler making company. We import boiler plates and boiler tubes. Being a very small company we source from Japan. Our order quantity is small. Japanese steel mills respond to our small quantity enquiry.
Also, steel executives were focused on their companies' quarterly stock valuations, not the companies' long-term success and survival. Wall Street has the same focus and demands quarterly performance targets. Decision makers in a public company are always senior executives close to retirement, so stock value at the time of their retirement is their holy grail. For the same reason, they were inclined to say yes to outrageous demands from labor unions. Better that than a debilitating strike. And the demands truly became outrageous in the extreme. When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, a family friend worked for Jones & Laughlin Steel in Cleveland. I think he got something like 9 weeks of vacation each year. And that was just the tip of the iceberg of endless perks he got. Frankly, he thought it was madness and he had no love for the union. Labor leaders were just like their company executive counterparts - focused on their short-term self-interest at the expense of everything else.
80 percent of the world's primary steel is produced via the blast furnace/ bof route. The inflexibility to adapt to improvements in technology was a management/ union disconnect
The unions knew the improved technology would mean fewer jobs, so they fought it. You see the same approach with the longshoremen on the ports. US ports are third world levels of efficiency, yet they went on strike to prevent automation.
More like 70%, and while BF-BOF still is the dominant steelmaking path, DRI-EAF is constantly increasing and will overtake in raw tonnage the BF-BOF production in the next two decades in the same way BF-BOF left the open heart furnace obsolete.
General MacArthur rebuilt the Japanese steel industry in the 50's after the war. By that time the US Steel industry was still using decades old tech and stuck with it. This is an old story. The entire US machine tool industry was wrecked in a similar manner.
I worked at a cold roll mill for 25 years. The steel coils we rolled came from integrated mills still using B.O.F. tech. Our customers demanded very specific grades of steel precisely alloyed for the final product they were to be used in. The E.A.F process cannot profitably control grades and alloy required in demanding situations. Their furnace runs on a never ending mish mash of junk steel. Its' fine for less demanding products, but I don't think you would be comfortable driving your car knowing the seat belt buckle was stamped from scrap clothes dryer duct. I think there will always be a need for integrated mills, but they will be using greener technology and far fewer workers.
DRI (HYL, Midrex, etc), can allow for such flexibility with an AOD-VOD/LF to refine the composition, and the sponge iron from DRI is easier to adjust chemicaly than pig iron to begin with.
Shoulda biked to a scheduled tour 😉 Nearly everyone in Seattle drives by the Nucor plant over the West Seattle Bridge, oblivious that there's a gigantic steel mill less surrounded by dense single-family residential. I've taken the tour here ~5 times in the last 10 years. Worth it every time!
This is such a beautiful video. Informative, interactive and lively. This is why UA-cam is still the best platform on internet. It's the best way to share human knowledge across the world.
@@wdmm94 you can use direct reduction iron or sponge iron, directly in the electric arc furnace. Sponge iron is mostly produced using the Midrex or HYL processes, reducing iron ore into sponge iron with cracked natural gas (CO and H2), with such composition control that you don't need the BOF converter and at lower temps and thus energy costs than a blast furnace. That is why in my country we only have 5 blast furnaces left countrywide but dozens upon dozens of HYL (and some Midrex) converters directly attached to electric arc furnaces, as close as physically possible.
Cool! In 1986 I was in college and took an intro to Metallurgy class. The highlight of the class was touring the Bethlehem Steel plant, where we got to see their BOFs in operation. Amazing! Sadly, that plant closed a decade or so later and Beth Steel itself folded not long after that. Fast forward to now, and when I go to alumni events I feel that the town of Bethlehem PA is more prosperous now than it was when the plant was operational in the mid-1980s
@1:55 No that ladder is not steel, its aluminum. I used to work at Pennex aluminum company in Greenville, PA. Next door to us was Werner Ladder Company, they bought our aluminum billets, definitely saved on shipping and shipping of scrap material. We would load up carts of billets and put them on a small track, that track would go through the plant wall and into the Werner plant to be turned into ladders.
One of many aspects that may have contributed to the rise of steel manufacturing in Europe and Japan in the 20th century could have been from the massive urban renewal taking place in those regions after being decimated from World War II. Japan and Germany, in rebuilding their countries after the war, could build new steel mills with the latest and efficient technologies. In addition, there was plenty of scrap steel laying about in Europe from the disabled military vehicles laying about. Whereas in the US, it was still WW II era technology that kept the mills plugging away, as the infrastructure for the industry was not destroyed from wartime aggression.
I can probably get you in contact with someone at Nucor to try to arrange a site visit. Also, there are three DOE funded pilot projects that were announced earlier this year that aim to decrease the cost of feedstock production.
It’s beyond me how unions and corporations in the US fail to see the blatantly obvious that is largely observed and followed in Europe: for true success unions and corporations work together to find a compromise for the benefit of both parties, not this completely antagonistic bs of us vs them…
It's a basic economic fact that advanced economies will lose their basic manufacturing sector over time. you can't have high GDP, high standard of living for the average folks, high salaries and low costs of production all at the same time. At some point, you will lose all the jobs which don't demand specialized or local labor. The sale to Nippon Steel might also have been part of a long term strategy to stop reinvesting into an industry which is less and less profitable even for top US steel makers, and just squeeze every last penny out of existing installations while reinvesting as little as possible until the final sale they knew was coming.
You can always have a government operated manufacturing sector, that is mostly automated, and just redistributes the wealth. The US postal service but for steel and other resources, has worked well in other countries. The fact TSMC dominates the global market, should be proof enough that government corporations are competitive.
I have the 100-year theory. Companies have a life span of 100 years. The Pennsylvania R.R. was at one time the largest company in America. It started in 1854 and died around 1966. Studebaker started around 1854, and died in 1963. I worked in the purchasing dept. of U.S.Steel in the early 70s. It was 70 years old, and started its decline process. One of the interesting things about the office was an operating ticktape machine. It was in a little open closet in the hallway. No one ever paid attention to it. There were many more oddities, but the most relevant was the employee phone book. Odd name that weren't typical to Pittsburgh were over represented. Then there were the braggards, who made it clear that their grandfather work with Carnegie. Of course, their function was not known. They specialized in long lunch ours. It is my opinion that nepotism rots large companies and destroys them.
I concur that nepotism rots a company. When things get tight for various reasons, it's the relatives that get protected, it seems. I worked in a shipyard, which we joked had a FBI program, Father. Brother. In-Law When a plant closes and I hear the generations of famies that worked whose jobs are gone, I get disgusted. Never mind the workforce that has no family or relation working in that plant. What about them?
My dads family has lived in Pittsburgh since they immigrated in the late 1880’s. My great grandfather worked in the Bessemer mills his whole life, his son in law (my grandpa) worked in the coke mills when he first graduated from Pitt, my dads first job out of college was repairing and optimizing arc furnace diodes for Union Carbide. They would all agree that Unions only exist because the government fails to do its job. I don’t think Unions are bad, since they have to exist. If we lived in a U.S. that actually reputably controlled wages and worker benefits unions wouldn’t need to exist though. People pay all kinds of money in union dues and fees, often times with the unions spending part of that money on questionable causes. Seems like things would be much more effective and cost efficient if the government could just moderate those things, whether it be the state government or federal.
Management is an easy scapegoat that people, like you, like to point. But the problem isn't them, its the union. The union stall and hinder the company effort to modernize their tech, the union fear the new efficient tech would lead to less manpower required and half of them would be laid off. They fought tooth and nail against the company and the management relent. Now they paid the price of their short-sightedness of wanting to keep everyone employed, and now most of them lose their job
Large legacy companies are notoriously bad at adopting new technologies. By the time they finally realize they need to modernize, it's too late to save the company.
I mean if your entire job consists of coming to work, and just sitting down to maintain already existent things, then your naturally become lazy to change. What instead should happen is when it comes to modernization, hire new people entirely to figure it out and treat it like a mini-startup within the company. Give them the resources and expertise they need and threaten to fire them if the venture fails.
Who would know better how to organize modern steel production than experts from Japan? If the Japanese acquisition means jobs for the Rust Belt & a contribution to the revitalization of American industry, bring it on!
You hit the nail right on the head. I worked for USS in the 70's and 80's in management. We knew about the Nucors of the world back then, but imports were seen as much more of a problem. In the end, the mini mills ate our lunch. USS could easily have gotten 14:13 into that business back then but felt they had too much invested in the old mills. Now they are desperately trying to catch up and survive.
Let's remember the Boomers. They were the trigger for the massive materialism that required steel. They topped out in the early 80s and steel demand slowed to a point that recycling could handle a lot of the demand. Modern steel is recycled 60-80%.
But upgrading furnaces now will increase my expenses. My stock holders wants that sweet sweet profit margin and dividens. Any decrease is seen as the end of the company, and every ”short term" investor / trader will pull out while they can.
It’s not just US Steel. It was every single integrated steel company in America. Bad management could be attributed to one company. But every single one, that’s just statistically improbable. Check out Clayton Christensen thoughts on this.
Further to your observation to US Steel’s Vertical Integration. In the early 70’s when I was a young Ships Officer working on the Great Lakes, USS owned roughly 100 mostly old and comparatively small Ships (Bulkers )operating on the Lakes.
Nice video, well researched and nicely presented, I've subscribed. Also, when tying your shoes, try making the very first not the other way around (so normally left over right, now do right over left, or vice versa), your total knot will become straight, instead of up-down like it is now.
the price of steel is very high these days. we used to buy steel about 15 yrs ago for 30 cents a pound. now it's like $1.20 that's like 25% per year increase. and tariffs make it worse.
@@sparksmcgee6641 Maybe that's the kind of math that doomed the financial assumptions of the U.S. steel industry. With that kind of accounting, it's no wonder U.S. manufacturing went down the drain.
just for info, long time ago i was visiting voest alpine in Austria. They talked about sheet metal being 100mm or roughly 4 inch thick. This is a different view on "sheet" metal
The thing that happened was the very same thing that happened in England - Britain & Prussia, a senior industrial elite group controlled the markets, creating choke points with their assets, thus strangling the economic flow in the country, damaging society a a hole, wether they used that economic leverage for political gains and other leverages is based on what we can dig up,
First time on channel. Gawd you’re cute! How do you afford to live in Connecticut?! AWESOME content. Consistent audio, even biking IN THE RAIN!… great delivery, too. The speed talking is manageable bc the diction is on point. 👏👏 Sub’d… thanks for the great content!
Sorry, as a metallurgical engineer I can honestly say you don't have a clue how steel is made or even what it is. Blowing over the Bessemer process! Confusing iron and steel. Please spend more time educating yourself.
Btw all the rhinks you showed were made using tools and machines made of steel. It is our manufacturing base material whereas concrete/cement are our infrastructure/built environment base
As a Rodbuster or Reinforcement Iron Worker it's really NOT Appropriate to Speak about Rebar as Nothing but maybe it wasn't very Profitable because it's paid for by the pound!!! 2,000 pounds per man, per 8 hours everyday or More & up to 5 to 7 Tons per man in a 15 to 17 Hour day!!! 6 Days a Week in 3 Mancamps in the lower 48 States for over 27 Years!!! Your Quite Welcome for you're Electricity, Water, Technology & of course a University to go to School with Air Conditioning & Central heating while We worked from -77 Below Wind chill factor!!!
"Hey kids! We're going on a field trip to a steel mill!" "Yyaaaaaay! [Pulls up to steel mill] "Okay kids, there's the steel mill" "Wooaaaa" ... "Okay sit down we're done and heading back" .... [Palpable disappointment]
@5:58... That's one of those places I worked long ago. It was at "De Hoogovens" in IJmuiden, Netherlands. It has long gone broken down, but was a lot of fun working. Open fireplace / protectve clothing and a big as tank-shovel, to shovel in all old metal things. Then later as it melted take samples and throw in some minerals to mix. Then it was poured into this huge bucket , that then later poured it's contents into small nuggets (couple of tons each). Anyway fun time / vacation work. I think it was Oxy-Style work. Now the plant is huge and still working, but more and more complaints about health are popping up in the surrounding villages.
The corporation never reinvested in there mills like they should have giving them the name slum lords of manufacturing My time in USS was 1974-2014 United steel workers
[that ladders not made of steel...] I don't think I ever seen a steel ladder and I've seen a few ladders. edit: I take it back ive never seen a mobile ladder made of steel.
The U.S. Steel Industry stuffed themselves by not updating their equipment. The EPA was trying to get them to update, if only to clean up the mess they were making. Electric Arc Furnaces are much cleaner than coal fired blast furnaces. Hydrogen Reduction Furnaces are cleaner still and make precise metallurgical control easy.
@@guardrailbiter The damage done by US industry is nonexistent compared to the atrocity China has done after it replaced it. We finally started repairing the ozone layer until these clowns decided to use the same banned chemicals again, and consequently destroy what we just saved.
This same stubbornness has plagued our power grid & our inability to improve our climate situation. We should have committed to utilizing Modern Nuclear Energy options as the backbone of our power grid. Then alternative power sources could be used in collaboration alongside that power grid. A system like this would improve our situation bit by bit, compared to now where we haven't improved at all, we've only been making it worse, day by day. Still doing nothing about it.. We should have started working on this years ago by now.. Our stubbornness regarding this situation is beyond frustrating.. I wish we could be more adaptive & flexible in general, so we could change & address a bunch of different important situations when they present themselves..
Now tell the next part of the story. How former Nucor people started the new big players in town. Steel dynamics. Big river steel (owned by uss now), and coming soon hybar
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Just a few years ago I met a man who once worked for US Steel. He started working for them around age 20. He retired 18 years later at age 38. Not put on disability, he retired. He was supposed to retire at 20 years, but for a reason I don’t remember, it was 18. I lost that part of the conversation because I was so focused on the fact that he retired at 38 and that he was then 94 years old. Yes, 94. And had COL increases along with 100% paid medical insurance all those years. You can imagine my reaction.
When a big company restructures/downsizes and they have a pension plan, it's not uncommon for workers to get a buyout offer which includes early access to drawing the pension, in exchange for a lower pension payout.
@@tomtxtx9617 Thank you. I was aware of such plans but decided not to speculate in my comment. You're more than likely correct. Peace. Out.
Such pensions did not disappear, they were stolen. The pensions that you and I are owed instead go into the hands of the 1% who never do any real work, physical or mental.
Btw, executives don't do any real work. The closest they come to that is handing work off for others to do.
64 years is crazy 😂
In order to retire as a contract employee you must reach a rule of 85. Which is a combination of years of service and age. If you are 55 with 30 years of service you can retire, with a reduced pension and healthcare coverage. The healthcare coverage is only for the rest of the contract retired under.
Any of these stories about union steelworkers living on easystreet after a wonderfully short working career is propaganda.
I know first hand, many of my coworkers retired in their mid to late sixties with many health difficulties from the environment and working conditions one has to deal with in an integrated mill.
Anyone who retired with less than twenty years was likely a manager, or one of a handful out of tens of thousands employees.
As a former Union Steel Worker I couldn't agree with you more. They FEARED change!
unions always oppose change unless it employs more union members. look at the recent east coast port strike. they want to eliminate any automation. unions need to learn if they oppose modernization that eventually the entire company dies and they lose all the jobs.
@@ronblack7870well automation leads to cutting jobs and skilled labor and the union dissolves as a result anyways because nobody is hiring for that job anymore. May as well lobby for yourselves cause the gravy train is coming to an end either way.
@@giantninja9173 Before NAFTA was even signed, the political leadership of the US, EU, Canada, and Mexico knew that all their various governments would need to coordinate massive programs to ensure Mexican farmers and American factory workers didn't totally lose out. Instead, we got mass migration, wiping out skilled trades & factory unions alike in the US. After the 2008 crisis, a massive infrastructure rebuild was suggested. We got less than half. Now half the workforce retired and the rest are sick & disabled. America needed to plan for automation & economic change. We need healthcare, education, and housing. Instead we get quarterly profits and the few who have lots of stocks or land or a business are wealthy.
@@ronblack7870 Yep. Unions would do better at working for retraining and expansion to keep workers employed, not at stopping automation. Eventually automation will come, as the coal workers have seen over the past 100 years - by fighting automation, Union members are ensuring they will be left by the side of the road one way or another.
Yes, I've had family members working in coal mines and part of UMWA, others at UAW, Teamsters, etc.
When done right, Unions are great - essential for workers to have enough power for a seat at the table and can offset the often overwhelming power of Capital. When Unions are mobbed up or otherwise compromised, they're not. Germany has a great model for unions - the Union generally gets seats on the company Board of Directors.
Why didn't they consider it to be critically important to keep up on the latest technology? If you don't keep up with the changes you get replaced like the horse breeders and stagecoach drivers were.
Your miissing a other side , I was in America about 27 years ago and I had a small manufacturing buisness and all of a sudden all the suppliers of A-588 steel hit me with a $70,000 dollar miniumum order AND a $1500 charge to write a receipt ! I told one of the steel sales men "your putting me out of buisness" and he said "we are doing this specifically to put small companies like yours out of buisness" It was not just steel , but steel was the worst.
Again marx was right free market is autopathological
@@Stszelec01Marx was right? Show me the proof of his system working, I'll wait.
@stellviahohenheim show me capitalist country where there is no authopathology of capitalism I'll wait
@@Stszelec01Better a pathological market then a pathological country that spreads its' rot in everything from steel nails to young minds.
@@stellviahohenheim Even if Marx's solution failed to materialize, doesn't mean the problems he was attempting to address aren't real.
I am old enough to have lived through all of this and been distraught as the industry fell apart in the 1975s. I never completely understood why this happened. Thank you for the explanation. It should be sold to the Japanese. I believe it would bring some jobs back to the US. Thank you.
I'm young enough to have been completely oblivious but, after reading incessantly about it for a month, can understand a fraction of how devastating this must've been for many Americans. Thanks for watching!
The companies didn't adapt better tech and the unions wouldn't let them get rid of the excess workers.
@@jonathanjones3126 Similar to the recent potential dock strike, the union wouldn't accept new technology that would reduce employment, and I imagine the harbors are not being run as efficiently as others around the world. It's always complicated. Elon Musk is controversial, but SpaceX makes Boeing and NASA look bloated and poorly run.
@mindreader nasa doesn't build anything really just hand out contracts. Boeing destroyed itself with penny pinching managers who cut corners until their was nothing left
True look it up @@mindreader
7:12 Sunk cost fallacy... Just because you have spent a lot of money in the past, doesn't change what you should buy in the future. US Steel could have created Basic Oxygen or Electric Arc refineries and shifted employees to work there. They chose not to do the rational step of buying the future.
There's a new kid on the block...using elemental hydrogen and iron ore. Burn the hydrogen in a retort with iron ore and you wind up with...steel. Nop coal. No limestone. We'll see. Armco Steel in Hamilton Ohio is involved.
Well, unions did push for retention of workers and continued use of old systems. So, US Steel's corporate self-interest was running against both unions and it's own complacency.
@@GregConquest lol they had plenty of time and power to make their own decisions if they truly wanted to. Union power was only ever significant for a very short period of time. Though the decline has been slow and drawn out, for most of the past several decades union opposition has been little of an obstacle to executive authority.
and then they blame the Chinese for everything.
The irony.. pun? of the sunk-cost fallacy for many situations is they don't understand sunk costs. It's an investment. I can purchase a car and use it to save me money by not paying large amounts for public transportation in the country side, but at some point it's cheaper to replace the car again when it's outlived its use.
The less clear case is when you haven't paid off the sunk-cost and trying to determine if the opportunity cost of holding on to the original investment is worth it.
Interesting to note that the allies did the demolition of aging steel mills in Germany and Japan so that they were able to modernize.
Got a source for that? Most German (and Japanese) industry was destroyed by 1945. One difference is Germans and Japanese are famous for caring about quality and efficiency. Marshall Plan aid won those conquests to Western-style economics but it was THEIR workers who did the actual rebuilding of their countries. Easy to see why since German and Japanese factories in the US are also highly productive using American workers. The US had plenty of money but ignored modern concepts of quality (W. Edwards Deming is a hero in Japan but was ignored in the US for much longer). American businesses exist only to enrich stockholders, not preserve anything long term.
My point was only that those countries had no option to continue with old tech since it was destroyed.
The funny thing is that germanys steel production didn't decline during the war. The cities where destroyed but the steel production was protected by aa and put underground and suffered little to no damage, so what's your point?
1939 23kt
1943 20kt
1944 19kt
I’m a metallurgist in the steel industry and all of this information is correct. I would love to be a source for another video.
Ive always wanted to know how they get carbon into steel at these quantities? Do they just chuck carbon into the molten metal? Because in my mind that would surely just burn off and form CO2…How does it work?
@@jean-pierrevandermerwe7604 The basic problem throughout the Iron age has been getting the carbon OUT (as I understand it).
@@polymorphus1 nah bro the difference between Iron and steel is about 2% carbon, the guy who patented the modern way to make steel (by adding carbon) was Rockefeller. The Jewish industrialist.
I think what you are referring to is sulphur (which deteriorates steel quality)
@@jean-pierrevandermerwe7604your information is simply wrong, you make steel by removing carbon from molten iron. Bessemer was the first to produce cheap steel by injecting air into molten iron. The air burned the carbon. And Rockefeller was a american christian with dutch heritage.
@@jean-pierrevandermerwe7604
Sulphur does have some nasty effects, but that’s not what’s going on here. I do some research with pipeline steels for my thesis, and I can assure you that carbon levels are almost always less than 0.1wt% in the final product - you pretty much always need to take the carbon out if you’re starting from iron ore
Even Nucor is relying on protectionism to thrive. Its process are behind competitors and US isn't investing on Hydrogen furness, so we're creating the new US Steel too
o.0 knowing the issues with hydrogen embrittlement a hydrogen furnace sounds... wrong.
@@brunsy1990 It's for reducing the iron oxide ore into elemental iron. As long as you use the right amount all the hydrogen is consumed in the reaction, combining with the oxygen to form dry steam as an exhaust gas. The resulting elemental iron then goes into the EAF along with other feedstocks for steelmaking.
The other thing not mentioned is demand, demand is higher in Asia because they're building more cars, skyscrapers, railways, boats.
Even with all else equal you couldn't ship steel from the mid west to south east Asia and beat them on price.
On that same theme, state and federal spending on infrastructure (as a percent of budget) also plummeted about the same time. Yes, sheet metal was the most profitable, but it was that rebar and structural steel sold by the gigaton to build bridges, skyscrapers, parking garages, and the rest that kept the lights on for the big players in the US. Since our tax dollars are now being sopped up by paying for people who aren't working, we're not investing in our nation's future in the same way that growing nations in Asia are.
@@FrankDyke "Since our tax dollars are now being sopped up by paying for people who aren't working" Or is that money now flowing into the pockets of big corporations and their billionaire owners thanks to the tax-cuts for the rich and big business? The US is doing a lot of socialism for the rich these days...
Yeah, they can ship here, but we can’t ship there. See the Jones Act for why.
There’s lots of reasons for most big failures, but we humans are always going to blame the things that fit our biases.
@@FrankDyke Too many people fail to realize the burden social security and Medicaid/Medicare are to society. Their budget is twice that of the military and one hundred times that of NASA. People say that those programs are important, and I'd agree, but they're too expensive for them to be worth it. It's like spending the entire Iraq war every year and a half.
There would be a lot more demand for steel in the US if it was a country that put proper priority on replacing old infrastructure and keeping it up to date.
An example is that when the steel beams that hold up a bridge have holes rusted through them, replacing the bridge is long overdue.
Used to know a woman whose husband was a VP at Bethlehem Steel. She would mention as often as possible, and you could tell she thought this made her the next best thing to royalty. This was in the 1980’s when everyone knew they really weren’t that big of a deal anymore.
Once a job at a company is a status symbol, it’s usually on the way down.
I can’t be sure but this sounds like some sage wisdom. I’ll remember this.
@@nathancourtney94 A job is supposed to be an equal exchange of labor for money. If a particular job is super coveted, then that's a sign that the exchange is not actually equal - that people are getting paid more than their labor is actually worth.
*glances over at Boeing* Hey, wasn't a Boeing job a huge deal in the 90's/00's?
The issue of iron ore is not addressed here. the ore coming out of Australia is far richer than here, providing an advantage to the steel companies that are using this source.
it isn’t stubbornness. the companies actually played the game right with the union. companies agree to demands to avoid strike. short-term resolved. technology to make steel changes dramatically requiring far, far less workers. long-term, you won’t need the workers-and there is no way around that reality. the companies and unions managed the short-term incentives together. reality eventually caught up with them.
Giving into union demands wasn't playing the game right. Unions saw all the profit and selfishly demanded a large chunk of it. USS should have kept back a larger share of their profits to reinvest in new technology. The unions specifically didn't want USS to adapt new technology because it meant more efficiency and thus fewer employees. USS took the easy way out and it cost them everything.
@@jeremiahvandoren7820 Both company and union followed the short-term incentives. nothing stubborn or greedy about that. it’s hard to say what would happen if the company retrofitted the plants, or closed them to build new ones. but likely a devastating strike. Everyone who worked in these plants from the 1960# on new how grossly inefficient and unsustainable they were. Take a look at Weirton Steel. They solved the greedy/stubborn management problem by employees taking over the plant. Results? Mass layoffs over time, become more efficient, sell the plant. Gone. Weirton hung on a bit longer but ultimately came to the same end.
@@jeremiahvandoren7820 The workers saw all the money they were making the executives and wanted a better share of what their labor produced? Must be so selfish of them
The algorithm led me here with the thumbnail, stayed for the brilliant writing, flawless delivery, and a bit of well done dry humor and snark. Part of me thinks she just covered this topic to show off her bougie Stanley Cup /s
subbed! (with notifications on!)
It's a Yeti, not a Stanley! Equally bourgeois though, so you've got me there haha.
The USA isn’t in a position to compete in manufacturing because of high wages. Steel workers in India and China get the equivalent of USD 2400 a year and I think I overestimated it. It’s sometimes half of this amount.
Open Hearths are gas-fired and convert molten iron from blast furnaces into steel. No one uses them today because basic oxygen furnaces are better, or melting scrap metal in electric arc furnaces. Coke is used in steel production, not coal!
@sop2510 electric arc furnaces are awesome tech
But Coke is made from coal a specially grade of coal called metallurgical coal and metallurgical coal is rare coal to get your hands on.
@@mikeyallen-yk4olis there a coal coke? I’m familiar with petroleum coke
@@greghight954 Yes there is coke made from coal in fact the process to make coke from coal is about the same as making charcoal from wood a low as possible oxygen environment is needed to make coke.
@@mikeyallen-yk4olAny bituminous coal can be used to make coke.
In the 90s, I had a chance to visit a re-milling plant in Ohio and also a POSCO plant in South Korea. At the the POSCO steel, producing 30+ times of coiled steel than the amount of the plant in Ohio, I saw less then 10 operators in the fully automatic plant. The plant in Ohio had over 150 employees per shift. Labor cost in the Ohio plant would make it un-competitable.
Unions are a bandaid solution. Instead we should have companies beg people to join them, instead of the other way around.
Unions also should be forced to compete with other unions, so a Union cant just destroy a company by dragging it down and keeping it behind competitors.
Armco in kansas city fully upgraded its factory became clean used recycled metal had a positive profit
Was bought up parted off and dismantled.
Nucor was a skimming the cream. You still need furnaces to make fresh production steel and lower wage countries do it cheaper.
Several countries subsidize their steel makers so few private companies can compete against that.
You can use EAF to make semi-fresh production steel. Still need scrap for bulking, but current Chinese EAFs can process a mix of 40% iron ore and 60% scrap to make most steel types. Also, some of the Chinese plants are super-integrated to the point that they can run a three-stage process. BOFs process ore, heat capture from the BOF section is then used to generate electricity to power the EAFs and the mills (and rest of plant), and the mill can run independently with only coal, ore, and scrap feed.
The real advantage other countries have is that they either directly fund the upgrading of processes or incentivise them through subsidies and tax breaks. Something that the US has only just got back into doing.
Protectionism much like a large monopoly generally leads to stagnation.
@@andrewsuryali8540 Also, if integrated properly, you can use the fresh raw molten iron from a normal furnace, haul it right to the electrofurnace, and fuel that furnace (which had some scrap to heat it up already) with still quite hot steel, so you don't need to smelt it from solid cold again.
Great presentation . I like . I had a boiler making company. We import boiler plates and boiler tubes. Being a very small company we source from Japan. Our order quantity is small. Japanese steel mills respond to our small quantity enquiry.
for the amount of effort you put in, Your video hasnt got the attention it deserves. This IS quality content.
Also, steel executives were focused on their companies' quarterly stock valuations, not the companies' long-term success and survival. Wall Street has the same focus and demands quarterly performance targets. Decision makers in a public company are always senior executives close to retirement, so stock value at the time of their retirement is their holy grail. For the same reason, they were inclined to say yes to outrageous demands from labor unions. Better that than a debilitating strike. And the demands truly became outrageous in the extreme. When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, a family friend worked for Jones & Laughlin Steel in Cleveland. I think he got something like 9 weeks of vacation each year. And that was just the tip of the iceberg of endless perks he got. Frankly, he thought it was madness and he had no love for the union. Labor leaders were just like their company executive counterparts - focused on their short-term self-interest at the expense of everything else.
They get greedy....they are greedy
9 weeks of paid vacation is normal outside of the US
@@jacobr5627 not 9 weeks. 4 weeks are normal
explaining complex stuff to the masses is a charity act.
High cost of labour is not the problem Japanese factories used much better tech to out to do American production
Pittsburgher here. We're glad they got bought. Both my uncles worked in the mills and agree. New investment has been desperately needed for decades.
0:37 heh... Iron-ic
Thank you algorithm for showing me an excellent creator with an excellent video.
80 percent of the world's primary steel is produced via the blast furnace/ bof route. The inflexibility to adapt to improvements in technology was a management/ union disconnect
The unions knew the improved technology would mean fewer jobs, so they fought it. You see the same approach with the longshoremen on the ports. US ports are third world levels of efficiency, yet they went on strike to prevent automation.
More like 70%, and while BF-BOF still is the dominant steelmaking path, DRI-EAF is constantly increasing and will overtake in raw tonnage the BF-BOF production in the next two decades in the same way BF-BOF left the open heart furnace obsolete.
General MacArthur rebuilt the Japanese steel industry in the 50's after the war. By that time the US Steel industry was still using decades old tech and stuck with it. This is an old story. The entire US machine tool industry was wrecked in a similar manner.
I worked at a cold roll mill for 25 years. The steel coils we rolled came from integrated mills still using B.O.F. tech. Our customers demanded very specific grades of steel precisely alloyed for the final product they were to be used in. The E.A.F process cannot profitably control grades and alloy required in demanding situations. Their furnace runs on a never ending mish mash of junk steel. Its' fine for less demanding products, but I don't think you would be comfortable driving your car knowing the seat belt buckle was stamped from scrap clothes dryer duct. I think there will always be a need for integrated mills, but they will be using greener technology and far fewer workers.
Great comment. EAF can't be for everything, but Nucor is great at what they do.
DRI (HYL, Midrex, etc), can allow for such flexibility with an AOD-VOD/LF to refine the composition, and the sponge iron from DRI is easier to adjust chemicaly than pig iron to begin with.
Shoulda biked to a scheduled tour 😉 Nearly everyone in Seattle drives by the Nucor plant over the West Seattle Bridge, oblivious that there's a gigantic steel mill less surrounded by dense single-family residential. I've taken the tour here ~5 times in the last 10 years. Worth it every time!
In his book, A Passion For Excellence, (1989 ish), Tom Peters talks about "old Steel" and Nucor, and says much of this same stuff.
Nucor went broke due to the higher costs of implementing the higher quality standards.
This is such a beautiful video. Informative, interactive and lively. This is why UA-cam is still the best platform on internet. It's the best way to share human knowledge across the world.
Car industry made the same mistakes, letting others get a foothold thinking they will never get the main market
The process you describe appears to be happening to Boeing, except rather a bit faster.
Same thing happened to Sears
Electric arc are great, but if they are only living off scrap who is making new steel from ore?
China and Japan using Australian ore.
@mrbillybob444 Anyone in US?
@@wdmm94 you can use direct reduction iron or sponge iron, directly in the electric arc furnace.
Sponge iron is mostly produced using the Midrex or HYL processes, reducing iron ore into sponge iron with cracked natural gas (CO and H2), with such composition control that you don't need the BOF converter and at lower temps and thus energy costs than a blast furnace.
That is why in my country we only have 5 blast furnaces left countrywide but dozens upon dozens of HYL (and some Midrex) converters directly attached to electric arc furnaces, as close as physically possible.
Cool! In 1986 I was in college and took an intro to Metallurgy class. The highlight of the class was touring the Bethlehem Steel plant, where we got to see their BOFs in operation. Amazing! Sadly, that plant closed a decade or so later and Beth Steel itself folded not long after that.
Fast forward to now, and when I go to alumni events I feel that the town of Bethlehem PA is more prosperous now than it was when the plant was operational in the mid-1980s
If only Lackawanna, NY could say the same. That city's fate was tied to Bethlehem Steel.
Great job! I love how you rode your bike to the steel mill to check it out. Seriously - this was both very fun and educational at the same time.
@1:55
No that ladder is not steel, its aluminum. I used to work at Pennex aluminum company in Greenville, PA. Next door to us was Werner Ladder Company, they bought our aluminum billets, definitely saved on shipping and shipping of scrap material. We would load up carts of billets and put them on a small track, that track would go through the plant wall and into the Werner plant to be turned into ladders.
One of many aspects that may have contributed to the rise of steel manufacturing in Europe and Japan in the 20th century could have been from the massive urban renewal taking place in those regions after being decimated from World War II.
Japan and Germany, in rebuilding their countries after the war, could build new steel mills with the latest and efficient technologies. In addition, there was plenty of scrap steel laying about in Europe from the disabled military vehicles laying about.
Whereas in the US, it was still WW II era technology that kept the mills plugging away, as the infrastructure for the industry was not destroyed from wartime aggression.
I can probably get you in contact with someone at Nucor to try to arrange a site visit.
Also, there are three DOE funded pilot projects that were announced earlier this year that aim to decrease the cost of feedstock production.
You are a journalist and can film anything you can see from the public right-of-way. No one can run you off.
It’s beyond me how unions and corporations in the US fail to see the blatantly obvious that is largely observed and followed in Europe: for true success unions and corporations work together to find a compromise for the benefit of both parties, not this completely antagonistic bs of us vs them…
Once UK was Nr steel producer, simple history repeats itself due we not learn from past failures.
The trickle-down economic model is exactly why people hung onto unions as long as they could.
I work mini mill , million ton mill with very few people. I seen what mill can out put. We made sheet metal coils .
It's a basic economic fact that advanced economies will lose their basic manufacturing sector over time. you can't have high GDP, high standard of living for the average folks, high salaries and low costs of production all at the same time. At some point, you will lose all the jobs which don't demand specialized or local labor.
The sale to Nippon Steel might also have been part of a long term strategy to stop reinvesting into an industry which is less and less profitable even for top US steel makers, and just squeeze every last penny out of existing installations while reinvesting as little as possible until the final sale they knew was coming.
You can always have a government operated manufacturing sector, that is mostly automated, and just redistributes the wealth.
The US postal service but for steel and other resources, has worked well in other countries.
The fact TSMC dominates the global market, should be proof enough that government corporations are competitive.
TSMC is mostly owned by foreign investors...
Still was a disaster in Europe too. They did subsidize it a great deal more than we did in the US. And now I don't think Japan is doing too well.
I have the 100-year theory. Companies have a life span of 100 years.
The Pennsylvania R.R. was at one time the largest company in America. It started in 1854 and died around 1966.
Studebaker started around 1854, and died in 1963.
I worked in the purchasing dept. of U.S.Steel in the early 70s. It was 70 years old, and started its decline process.
One of the interesting things about the office was an operating ticktape machine.
It was in a little open closet in the hallway. No one ever paid attention to it.
There were many more oddities, but the most relevant was the employee phone book. Odd name that weren't typical to Pittsburgh were over represented. Then there were the braggards, who made it clear that their grandfather work with Carnegie. Of course, their function was not known. They specialized in long lunch ours.
It is my opinion that nepotism rots large companies and destroys them.
I concur that nepotism rots a company.
When things get tight for various reasons, it's the relatives that get protected, it seems. I worked in a shipyard, which we joked had a FBI program, Father. Brother. In-Law
When a plant closes and I hear the generations of famies that worked whose jobs are gone, I get disgusted.
Never mind the workforce that has no family or relation working in that plant. What about them?
My dads family has lived in Pittsburgh since they immigrated in the late 1880’s. My great grandfather worked in the Bessemer mills his whole life, his son in law (my grandpa) worked in the coke mills when he first graduated from Pitt, my dads first job out of college was repairing and optimizing arc furnace diodes for Union Carbide. They would all agree that Unions only exist because the government fails to do its job. I don’t think Unions are bad, since they have to exist. If we lived in a U.S. that actually reputably controlled wages and worker benefits unions wouldn’t need to exist though. People pay all kinds of money in union dues and fees, often times with the unions spending part of that money on questionable causes. Seems like things would be much more effective and cost efficient if the government could just moderate those things, whether it be the state government or federal.
lol, this is part of the plot in cyberpunk 2077
Let me guess, management stopped being steelmakers and started to be Ivy league "businessmen".
Management is an easy scapegoat that people, like you, like to point. But the problem isn't them, its the union. The union stall and hinder the company effort to modernize their tech, the union fear the new efficient tech would lead to less manpower required and half of them would be laid off. They fought tooth and nail against the company and the management relent. Now they paid the price of their short-sightedness of wanting to keep everyone employed, and now most of them lose their job
Large legacy companies are notoriously bad at adopting new technologies. By the time they finally realize they need to modernize, it's too late to save the company.
I mean if your entire job consists of coming to work, and just sitting down to maintain already existent things, then your naturally become lazy to change.
What instead should happen is when it comes to modernization, hire new people entirely to figure it out and treat it like a mini-startup within the company.
Give them the resources and expertise they need and threaten to fire them if the venture fails.
Who would know better how to organize modern steel production than experts from Japan? If the Japanese acquisition means jobs for the Rust Belt & a contribution to the revitalization of American industry, bring it on!
Also to whip the unions into shape and have a dose of reality.
This story ignored the lost demand that came from imported cars and appliances..
shame... Japan is a foreign nation yes, but our closest ally after WW2... i didn't see them buying them as a threat
After u crushed their growth in late 80s, hah... They have plenty of grudges.
Thanks Karin Shedd ❤
You hit the nail right on the head. I worked for USS in the 70's and 80's in management. We knew about the Nucors of the world back then, but imports were seen as much more of a problem. In the end, the mini mills ate our lunch. USS could easily have gotten 14:13 into that business back then but felt they had too much invested in the old mills. Now they are desperately trying to catch up and survive.
Let's remember the Boomers. They were the trigger for the massive materialism that required steel. They topped out in the early 80s and steel demand slowed to a point that recycling could handle a lot of the demand. Modern steel is recycled 60-80%.
Yea nowadays cars are like $30k and nobody can afford the materialism that boomers had.
Most interesting. Thumbs up. Subscribed.
Well done... hope that you get some of that sweet UA-cam ad revenue to finish renovating your house!
Repeating CCCP propaganda isn't the truth.
Your comment to the algorithm gods’ ears 😅
She is an employee she doesnt get the revenue she probably has a salary
But upgrading furnaces now will increase my expenses. My stock holders wants that sweet sweet profit margin and dividens. Any decrease is seen as the end of the company, and every ”short term" investor / trader will pull out while they can.
I've never heard investors complain that investing back into the company is a negative. Pretty obvious you're not an executive anywhere.
@@jeremiahvandoren7820the venture capitals are like that.
Bad management, worse unions.
Spoken like someone who's never worked a day in their life. The USWA were the saviors of the American (and Canadian) steel workers.
It’s not just US Steel. It was every single integrated steel company in America. Bad management could be attributed to one company. But every single one, that’s just statistically improbable. Check out Clayton Christensen thoughts on this.
Nice way to start my day, a cup of coffee in my steel Yeti and some compelling history. Thanks
Further to your observation to US Steel’s Vertical Integration. In the early 70’s when I was a young Ships Officer working on the Great Lakes, USS owned roughly 100 mostly old and comparatively small Ships (Bulkers )operating on the Lakes.
Great video.
Eaf does not make steel, it recycles it, that is something different.
It can, with direct reduction iron or sponge iron from either HYL, Midrex, etc., processes.
Ok, did not know that, learned something thnx.
That wire is BX cable. It has plastic insulated copper wires in it surrounded by aluminum sheathing.
Nice video, well researched and nicely presented, I've subscribed. Also, when tying your shoes, try making the very first not the other way around (so normally left over right, now do right over left, or vice versa), your total knot will become straight, instead of up-down like it is now.
the price of steel is very high these days. we used to buy steel about 15 yrs ago for 30 cents a pound. now it's like $1.20 that's like 25% per year increase. and tariffs make it worse.
You don't know how to calculate that increase. Way off there
@@sparksmcgee6641 Maybe that's the kind of math that doomed the financial assumptions of the U.S. steel industry. With that kind of accounting, it's no wonder U.S. manufacturing went down the drain.
@@drmodestoesq😂
Americans are stuck in 1950.
Democrats are stuck in the 1920s. Nobody wants 1920's labor laws in the modern age.
just for info, long time ago i was visiting voest alpine in Austria. They talked about sheet metal being 100mm or roughly 4 inch thick. This is a different view on "sheet" metal
The thing that happened was the very same thing that happened in England - Britain & Prussia, a senior industrial elite group controlled the markets, creating choke points with their assets, thus strangling the economic flow in the country, damaging society a a hole, wether they used that economic leverage for political gains and other leverages is based on what we can dig up,
First time on channel. Gawd you’re cute! How do you afford to live in Connecticut?! AWESOME content. Consistent audio, even biking IN THE RAIN!… great delivery, too. The speed talking is manageable bc the diction is on point. 👏👏
Sub’d… thanks for the great content!
It so surreal that industries that offen are dying are too stubborn to reinvent
Short-term profits instead of reinvestment to survive
Sorry, as a metallurgical engineer I can honestly say you don't have a clue how steel is made or even what it is. Blowing over the Bessemer process! Confusing iron and steel. Please spend more time educating yourself.
I bet they would give you a tour if you asked nicely! Electric arc furnaces are amazing to see.
Btw all the rhinks you showed were made using tools and machines made of steel.
It is our manufacturing base material whereas concrete/cement are our infrastructure/built environment base
I first read the title as "how subnautica killed us steel" and was very interested.
As a Rodbuster or Reinforcement Iron Worker it's really NOT Appropriate to Speak about Rebar as Nothing but maybe it wasn't very Profitable because it's paid for by the pound!!! 2,000 pounds per man, per 8 hours everyday or More & up to 5 to 7 Tons per man in a 15 to 17 Hour day!!! 6 Days a Week in 3 Mancamps in the lower 48 States for over 27 Years!!! Your Quite Welcome for you're Electricity, Water, Technology & of course a University to go to School with Air Conditioning & Central heating while We worked from -77 Below Wind chill factor!!!
The background music is really loud and it's hard to catch what the host is saying 😕
"Hey kids! We're going on a field trip to a steel mill!" "Yyaaaaaay! [Pulls up to steel mill] "Okay kids, there's the steel mill" "Wooaaaa" ... "Okay sit down we're done and heading back" .... [Palpable disappointment]
@5:58... That's one of those places I worked long ago. It was at "De Hoogovens" in IJmuiden, Netherlands.
It has long gone broken down, but was a lot of fun working. Open fireplace / protectve clothing and a big as tank-shovel, to shovel in all old metal things. Then later as it melted take samples and throw in some minerals to mix. Then it was poured into this huge bucket , that then later poured it's contents into small nuggets (couple of tons each). Anyway fun time / vacation work. I think it was Oxy-Style work.
Now the plant is huge and still working, but more and more complaints about health are popping up in the surrounding villages.
Did you try to get in touch with the steel company to get a tour? That would have made your bike ride more worth it.
High value steel is hardox and caterpillar tracks and 304 and 316 stainless and specialist steels that require careful mixing and making
The corporation never reinvested in there mills like they should have giving them the name slum lords of manufacturing
My time in USS was 1974-2014
United steel workers
[that ladders not made of steel...]
I don't think I ever seen a steel ladder and I've seen a few ladders.
edit: I take it back ive never seen a mobile ladder made of steel.
They're at big box home improvement stores. They're usually on dollies.
The EPA did a lot of damage to the industrial base of the US.
Not as much damage as the industries did to our environment.
The U.S. Steel Industry stuffed themselves by not updating their equipment. The EPA was trying to get them to update, if only to clean up the mess they were making.
Electric Arc Furnaces are much cleaner than coal fired blast furnaces.
Hydrogen Reduction Furnaces are cleaner still and make precise metallurgical control easy.
@@guardrailbiter The damage done by US industry is nonexistent compared to the atrocity China has done after it replaced it.
We finally started repairing the ozone layer until these clowns decided to use the same banned chemicals again, and consequently destroy what we just saved.
Cool video thank you
My neighbor down here in Florida works for Nucor which is 13 miles away. He is not a happy worker tho.
Thank you 🙂
This same stubbornness has plagued our power grid & our inability to improve our climate situation. We should have committed to utilizing Modern Nuclear Energy options as the backbone of our power grid. Then alternative power sources could be used in collaboration alongside that power grid. A system like this would improve our situation bit by bit, compared to now where we haven't improved at all, we've only been making it worse, day by day. Still doing nothing about it.. We should have started working on this years ago by now.. Our stubbornness regarding this situation is beyond frustrating.. I wish we could be more adaptive & flexible in general, so we could change & address a bunch of different important situations when they present themselves..
You failed to mention continuous casting, of which US Steel was the prime innovator.
And the steel cage to keep your child safe when your not home
Why is the camera so high up . I wanna see the full person when she is talking
Music by Tom Fox?
Now tell the next part of the story. How former Nucor people started the new big players in town. Steel dynamics. Big river steel (owned by uss now), and coming soon hybar
Lunar sheetmetal production will revolutionize manned space flight.
Backbone is really the backbone of idioms in this video