This is the vid from Fox news in St. Louis. It is copyrighted snip and I shall withdraw if objections made over copyright. Fox did a second story "A century of Steel" and it is excellent vid.
My hats off to Fox, Kmov and KSD over the last couple months. They have done better at covering some of these stories last few months than they have in years. One hopes they continue.
This will be discussed at May meeting:
---------------------------------------------------------
This is what Post Dispatch said and ditto copyright comments:
Crowd, mostly of laid-off steelworkers, rally to 'Buy American'
By Tim Bryant
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Tuesday, Apr. 07 2009
GRANITE CITY -- Hundreds of laid-off steelworkers, nearly all waving 'Buy American' signs, rallied today to get their jobs back.The rally at the Port Authority at River's Edge was a display of nationalism that may continue as the recession drags on. At the far end of the area where the rally was staged stood dozens and dozens of steel green pipes that rallygoers said were made in India for a pipeline from Canada to the Wood River refinery.One of the speakers was Russ Saltsgaver, who is president of Steelworkers Local 1899. He told those at the rally, referring to the foreign-made pipe, "This pipe is a symbol of what's gone wrong with American trade laws... We can do it, we're capable of doing it, we damn well want to do it."About a half-dozen speakers, mostly union officials and lobbyists, urged the crowd to pressure their elected officials to uphold trade laws and buy American-made goods.Many in the crowd work at U.S. Steel's Granite City Works, which has been shut down except for a skeleton crew since late last year.The rally drew a sizeable crowd under sunny skies and with a cold wind blowing.
-------------------------------------------
Laid-off workers are fired up over Asian steel
Bill Lambrecht WASHINGTON, Apr 07, 2009 (St. Louis Post-Dispatch - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Even before trainloads of Asian steel started rolling into the Metro East, the "Buy American" provisions in the stimulus package offered hope for hollowed-out steel towns like Granite City.
But the arrival in recent weeks of thousands of tons of steel stamped "Made in India" for a Canada-to-Illinois pipeline has inflamed passions among laid-off steelworkers and advocates of "Buy American."
Granite City is the latest battleground in a campaign that has reached out to more than 800 cities, towns and state governments, calling on authorities to pass Buy American resolutions. Organizers have been successful in Madison, Maryville and Pontoon Beach.
Today, hundreds of Buy American proponents will hold a rally at the Port Authority at River's Edge. It will be the sort of display of nationalism that might occur more frequently as the recession continues -- the kind of protests not welcomed by defenders of global trade.
Flatbed trains laden with the massive Indian steel pipes, each weighing several tons, will serve as a the backdrop for complaints about imports of subsidized steel from China and India. Many in the crowd will be steelworkers from U.S. Steel's Granite City Works, shut down except for a skeleton crew since late last year.
"You start getting upset when you realize all that steel that could have been processed a half-mile down the road," said Jeff Rains, the retired Granite City steelworker who stumbled on the imported steel in February.
'MADE IN AMERICA' BRIDGES
The campaign is pressuring Missouri and Illinois to enforce "Buy American" rules of the economic recovery program when they distribute the gusher of construction money arriving from Washington. The rules call for American-made materials unless it hikes a project's cost by more than 25 percent.
Both states say they have been abiding by similar rules but that the new law can work to weed out contractors intent on sneaking in foreign products.
"We constantly fight foreign steel. It's a top issue at every construction site -- an issue we've been struggling with for some time," said the Illinois Department of Transportation's David Lippert.
When steel from China, India or any nondomestic source shows up, Lippert said, the order goes out that "we can't pay for it. Get it off the job."
In Missouri, transportation officials made certain to enforce Buy American when becoming the first state to award a stimulus project -- on an Osage River bridge needing steel. American steel also will be used on the new $640 million Mississippi River Bridge approved before the stimulus, officials said.
Dave Nichols, the Missouri Department of Transportation's director of program delivery, said the Buy American provisions are being felt even though similar rules existed. "They've had an impact, putting fabricators in our state and surrounding states to work," he said. "They're all hungry. It's been a very positive thing and we'd like to do more of it."
Yet the Buy American wording is troubling to business interests, who fought in Congress to dilute it. They fear higher costs and more pro-worker legislation in Congress. They also worry about retaliation from trading partners that could obstruct the flow of products.
John Murphy, vice president for international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, argued that the Buy American campaign already has generated a backlash against U.S. interests abroad.
"Companies in all kinds of sectors tell us that they are being confronted with charges of outrageous protectionism back home and being put in a position of having to defend U.S. action," he said.
ASIA TARGETED
President Barack Obama warned about negative global reaction. Last month, a federal entity called the Civilian Agency Acquisition Council issued guidelines for Buy American that restricted the law to construction materials such as steel and left open the possibility that components could come from foreign sources.
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, a former GOP congressman from Peoria, sounded less than enthusiastic when asked about the new rules. "That's something that's been talked about by other people in the administration. It doesn't really make any difference what I think about it; we're going to do what Congress tells us to do," he said.
In its final version, the Buy American provisions would appear to take aim at countries that haven't eliminate protectionism in public procurement and who subsidize steel -- particularly China and India.
For India, source of all that steel in Granite City, U.S. government records identify more than 20 Indian government subsidies for steel. The effect is to make it hard for steel from places such as Granite City to compete in the global market.
Two years ago, TransCanada, the company building the 2,150-mile Keystone Pipeline with ConocoPhillips, looked at steel prices and other factors when choosing India as one of its sources for the $12 billion venture. By the end of this year, the company plans for the pipeline to carry oil from northern Alberta to Wood River and on to a hub in Patoka, Ill., 77 miles to the east.
Jim Prescott, TransCanada's Chicago-based spokesman, said his company "understands and completely sympathizes with the plight of steelworkers." He added: "This will employ thousands of union workers in construction of the project and putting the pipe in the ground ... It's almost fair to say this is a union project."
Even so, those Indian inscriptions stenciled inside all that TransCanada steel remind steelworkers like Doug May of Collinsville what's been lost. May, 54, a steelworker for 36 years, was laid off from his job as a crane operator at U.S. Steel in December.
"It would keep our plant busy 24 hours a day seven days a week just for this portion of the pipeline," he said. "It's almost reached a point where you wonder whether we have lost so much manufacturing that we have to go outside of our borders now." To see more of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go
to http://www.stltoday.com. Copyright (c) 2009, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax
to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave.,
Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, St. Louis Post-Dispatc
---also from Post Dispatch
---------------------
Kmov story and they have vid at site:
Protest staged in Granite City over India-made steel
06:10 PM CDT on Tuesday, April 7, 2009
GRANITE CITY, Ill. (AP) -- Organizers of a protest in a southern Illinois city where 2,000 steelworkers have been laid off say thousands of tons of foreign-made steel being brought into the area are a slap in the face.
About 1,000 people rallied Tuesday against the backdrop of piles of green-colored piping made from steel from India. Many of the protesters have been laid off since December from the United States Steel plant in Granite City.
Those pipes will be used for a 2,000-mile pipeline being built from Alberta, Canada, to Wood River, just north of Granite City.
The rally's organizers say the steel used in such pipes could be made at the idled Granite City plant. And they're asking governments along the pipeline's path to say no to the project unless U.S.-made steel is used.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved (this is same story In Chicago Tribune and KC Star)
No comments:
Post a Comment