B   M   W   E
JOURNAL
ONLINE VERSION VOLUME 107 - NUMBER 4 - MAY 1998
Steelworkers Target Wells Fargo
 

Steelworkers who couldn't get their jobs back by walking the picket line for almost three months are turning to financial pressure in their battle against Pueblo's Rocky Mountain Steel.

The president of the United Steelworkers of America, George Becker, and the executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, Linda Chavez-Thompson, announced in late January that the steelworkers local in The Dalles, Ore., and the company for which most of the union members work, Northwest Aluminum, will close a $20 million pension account at Wells Fargo Bank.

Union officials say Wells Fargo, as the principal lender to the parent company of Rocky Mountain Steel, Oregon Steel, is financing "the war on workers at the Pueblo mill."

About 1,400 union workers on Oct. 3 struck the Pueblo mill, which recently changed its name from DF&I Steel. The striking workers cited as their main complaints forced overtime and a lack of pension benefits for employees who worked under a previous owner.

A spokesman at the Western Council of Industrial Workers in Portland, Ore., said that organization has already closed most of its Wells Fargo accounts. Mike Pieti said the union will have withdrawn more than $5 million from Wells Fargo to show its support for the striking steelworkers.

"We can't work with an organization that is supporting a company that is putting people out of work," Pieti said.

A spokesman at the Denver branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers said the leaders of that organization have also voted to take its bank business elsewhere. The group was not able to offer an estimate of how much money is involved.

The Steelworkers ended the strike unconditionally on Dec. 30, but was told there were fewer than 30 jobs available. Oregon Steel hired replacements for the workers almost immediately after the strike began in October, and considers them permanent employees.

Excerpted from The Denver Post, January 29, 1998, Jim Mallory.

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