Refusing to Say Uncle

By KURT ANDERSEN

In West Virginia, a company town may become a town company

Weirton, W. Va., was not exactly named "in honor" of Ernest T. Weir. Rather, when Weir bought a tract of farm land in the state's panhandle in 1909 and built a sprawling steelmaking complex, he needed people and houses to go along with his factory. Thus the town was born. Today Weirton Steel Co. is a division of National Steel Corp., but a majority of the labor force in Weirton (pop. 25,536) still works in the rumbling, fuming steelworks along Main Street. "It's sink or swim together," says Mary Brula, a bank teller whose husband has worked at Weirton Steel since 1958.

Lately, sinking together has been a distinct possibility. In March, National Steel announced it was "not economically feasible" to modernize the marginally profitable (less than $10 million on 1981 sales of $1 billion) Weirton plant; the company prefers to invest in other enterprises with "the potential for substantially higher returns." By 1987 most of the factory would be shut down and 70% of the work force fired, unless, National Steel said, Weirton's 8,800 workers would like to buy the facility and run it themselves.

For the past five months Weirtonians have wondered if and how the sale, which would be the largest of its kind in the U.S., might be accomplished. Last week a consulting firm, hired by the Steelworkers, said it was possible. To get financing and ensure future profitability, however, sacrifice would be required: at least 400 Weirton employees would be laid off and the rest would face a 32% cut in pay and fringe benefits. Moreover, the workers would have to spend $1 billion on new equipment through the 1980s. The payroll saving would be used to buy stock in a new, worker-owned company, and that stock would be put up as collateral to get capital loans from banks. "The report left me very optimistic," says Walter Bish, president-elect of Weirton's Independent Steelworkers Union. "Especially," he adds, "when you look at the only available alternative, which is to close down the plant and leave everybody without a job."

Negotiations for the sale are to begin this month; the price could be up to $200 million. "It's not a dying operation," says David Robertson,

Weirton native and the union's lawyer. "You can talk all you want about 'worker participation,' but you don't have anything unless you have a decent business." Right now the steel company is both the largest employer and taxpayer in the state. Employees have always had their own in-house union, unaffiliated with the United Steelworkers of America, and relations with management have been comparatively smooth (no strikes since the Depression) and rewarding (wages and benefits average $24.65 an hour, compared with about $22 for Steelworkers nationally).

The dominance of the town by the steel company is plain. Smokestacks and giant ventilator shafts are visible for miles, and waste slag sits in heaps around the townscape. A billboard proclaims

Weirton THE HOME OF THE MIGHTY TIN CAN; old-fashioned tin plate, which has lost much of its market to aluminum and plastics, accounts for half of the plant's 2 million-ton annual production.

It is a town of immigrants and their offspring--Poles, Greeks, Italians, Yugoslavs--whose sense of ethnic and familial snugness is reinforced by friendships forged on the steel-mill floors. This closeness was depicted in the movie The Deer Hunter, whose home-town scenes were filmed in Weirton. "You just know everybody," says Fran Crow, 27, a third-grade teacher. Her husband John, 28, has been furloughed from his job as a Weirton Steel salesman, one of 2,600 who received a pink slip in the past two years. "At first I was thrilled," he says. "I thought I'd play a little golf." Now, he says, "it's scary."

But it is also exciting because, as Bish points out, "our concessions are going to be to us, the owners." Not everyone may be willing to assume that responsibility. Only those 8,800 not yet laid off, mostly older people, can vote to approve any buyout. Workers with the greatest seniority are wary of jeopardizing their pension benefits, now as much as $25,000 a year. "I don't expect those still working to go along with any talk about making concessions," says Michael Shimko, 30, a laid-off chrome applicator.

Shimko should talk to Dick Heilman, 52, who went to work at Weirton Steel in 1948. Heilman would hate to forgo any of the perks, among them free dental care and double pay for overtime, let alone lose 32% of his $29,000 pipefitter's salary. But, he says, "it's different when you're working for yourself. The minute it was announced that we were going to buy the plant, I noticed people in my section working longer and taking shorter breaks. There's a lot we can do without."

The already proud town has tapped whole new reserves of native boosterism. Green bows are stuck up everywhere, as are green WE CAN DO IT bumper stickers. The supply of WE CAN DO IT lapel pins sold out some time after the June "Save Our Valley Rally." One local businessman thinks that other merchants will follow his lead and cut prices by 20% as their share of the community sacrifice.

If the buy-out works, of course, Weirton Steel will have made a startling transformation, from one capitalist's prosperous fief to the principal U.S. enclave of--yes--a kind of homespun socialism. But Weirtonians think more in terms of preserving a place where rich, hard-working lives have been uncommonly possible. If there really is a way for every will, willful Weirton may just have a chance to live happily ever after. --By Kurt Andersen. Reported by J. Madeleine Nash/Weirton

With reporting by J. MADELEINE NASH

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