Reviewed by Ann Duffy, Brock University

Livingstone, Smith and Smith provide us with an invaluable guide to understanding the specifics of the decline of steel industry in Hamilton and, more broadly, the implications of recent momentous shifts in Canadian labour markets for workers, their families and communities. Livingstone’s introduction raises the increasingly ubiquitous question of whether there is a future for manufacturing employment in developed nations. Livingstone argues for the possibility of a profoundly changed but persevering steel industry. These themes of transformations and potentialities permeate the subsequent essays. 

 The first chapter, by Livingstone, guides the reader through the tumultuous history of Stelco in the context of a globally transforming steel industry. This very detailed discussion introduces most of the major economic factors in play. Technological innovation, global competition, trade agreements, unions, finance capital and workplace restructuring all figure prominently. In an account with Shakespearian overtones, Stelco rises to become the largest Canadian-owned industrial company and for sixty years is

Canada’s “wealthiest, largest and most diversified steelmaker.” By 1980, with 26,000 workers, it is the cornerstone of Hamilton’s economy. From these heady heights, the decline is precipitous. Thousands of workers are displaced and by 2003 about 9,000 workers remain. These numbers dwindle to a mere 850 by mid-2010. As Livingstone explains through interview excerpts, these events transform the lives of workers, their families and the surrounding community. A “good job for life” is beyond the grasp of all but a few and many bustling plant floors become “human deserts.”

Against this historical backdrop, in Chapter 2 Dorothy Smith and Stephen

Dobson explore the implications of these events for training and skill retention at Stelco and, more generally, in the manufacturing sector. As the authors explain, former patterns of skill transmission tended to rely on worker-controlled on-the-job learning, apprenticeships and transmittal of skills in the working-class community. The net result was a workplace that valued the experienced worker’s expertise and which tended to draw managers and supervisors from the shop floor. The restructuring of the steel industry has eviscerated these processes and replaced them with state-funded educational programs, notably at community colleges, that target corporate needs. The authors underscore the importance of recognizing the knowledge and skills (and workers’ control) that are being lost. As Stelco’s labour force ages (reflecting seniority rights and layoff patterns), there are few mechanisms for capturing the worker expertise developed from years of on-the-job experience. In the more generalized process, the manual/mechanical skills “stored and transmitted” in working-class communities are being steadily undermined and workers’ power resources eroded.

In the final chapter by David Livingstone and Warren Smith (a long-time Stelco steelworker and former president of USW local 1005) the Stelco story is updated. In 2004 the company declares bankruptcy and in 2007 US Steel takes over. On the ropes in the face of cheap imported steel and mounting debts, Stelco still fails to address the problem of labour force renewal. As its workforce ages and retires, it relies on overtime and contracting out (including the rehiring of retirees on a contract/temporary basis) to manage its labour needs rather than hiring and training a younger workforce. At the same time, including under US Steel, the company maintains a heavy-handed, top-down approach to labour relations which excludes the kinds of management-worker consultation which might facilitate co-operation and on-the-job training. The authors conclude with an examination of alternative futures for Stelco/US Steel. In particular, they focus on the undesirability of foreign ownership and the possibilities for repurchase by Canadian private capital, for the creation of a Crown Corporation and for worker ownership. In terms of possible alternatives for management-labour relations, they critique top-down hierarchical management and urge consideration of consultative management, industrial democracy and worker self-management.

Emphasizing the possibilities implied by agency and political will, they conclude with the potentialities for a more democratic and environmentally friendly workplace and economy.

There is no question that this collection provides invaluable insight into the processes that transformed Stelco, Hamilton and, in many respects, the Canadian economy and working-class communities. The analysis is accessible and compelling.

Further, the reader is invited to “make connections” to a wide array of issues beyond the factory floor, including the role of education and training, changes in working-class communities and families and the prospects for democratic actions in Canada.

Within this overall very favourable response, I would suggest that the argument that manufacturing will persist as a significant source of employment warrants, in my view, a bit more qualification. The sheer numbers of lost jobs speaks to a profound shift not only in manufacturing employment but also for the communities which rely on these jobs. The process of “making things to sell” may persist, but “good” manufacturing jobs (secure, unionized, well-paid and well-benefited employment) appear decidedly imperilled. Ironically, in the absence of much else in the way of employment, arts and crafts are being promoted by local governments and agencies in Hamilton as the new entry point into the labour market. As de-industrialized workers I’ve interviewed in Niagara repeatedly comment, “we need good jobs” and “we need thousands of jobs, not hundreds.” And, as those workers who have been “adjusted” into both service sector work and low-paid manufacturing work complain, “how is it possible to have a mortgage on

$15 an hour?”

The current economic downturn has provided a further opportunity for companies to shed more unionized workers or to hamstring unions with tiered contracts and the constant threat of layoffs. In this context, it appears likely that only a minority of workers will have continued access to the traditional “good” manufacturing job while the overwhelming majority will be displaced to service sector employment or to a kind of marginalized manufacturing work characterized by much smaller workplaces, little or no unionization and insecure employment. These smaller manufacturing plants are clearly more vulnerable to relocation to cheaper labour markets. In the growing absence of good unionized jobs secured by a massive workforce, the working class and its communities will in all likelihood be fundamentally altered.

Dorothy Smith and Stephen Dobson have raised an important issue in terms of the erosion of working-class skill sets—skill sets that traditionally grounded familial and community relations and were an important source of self-worth. Hopefully, researchers will pick up on this important cross-over between paid and unpaid work and community and explore its connections to both commodification and the rise of corporations such as Home Depot.

 Finally, although the proposed alternative futures are desirable, they seem far removed. Recent events, such as the decision to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board, the lack of an effective, co-ordinated reaction to US Steel, the almost complete absence of effective responses from any level of government to the closure of industries, the blatant bullying by Caterpillar Corporation and, overall, the growing gap between haves and have-nots suggest a troubled path to progressive social change. 

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Is there still hope for U.S. Steel workers?

 Book looks at how to keep steelmaking alive in Canada

While it would be an overstatement to say a new book due for release this week is a Valentine’s Day present for 900 locked-out U.S. Steel workers in Hamilton, it does offer some hope for the Canadian steel industry.

 Manufacturing Meltdown: Reshaping Steel Work is a 224-page book that looks at the decline of Stelco in Hamilton from the 1980s to the takeover by U.S. Steel, along with the various U.S. management strategies used by the company and the union’s response to them.

 The book is the compilation of nearly 30 years of research by former United Steelworkers Union Local 1005 president and Mountain resident Warren Smith, David Livingstone, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, and researcher Dorothy Smith.

 Livingstone noted the global steel crisis began with massive downsizing at European plants in the mid-’70s and arrived in Canada about a decade later.

 With most of Canada’s steelmaking industry now in foreign hands, the book suggests four alternatives for the U.S. Steel operation and future steelmaking in Canada: further foreign takeover of domestic steel plants; the repurchase of the former Hilton Works by Canadian investors; turning the Hamilton plant into a government-owned Crown corporation; and allowing the union to own and operate the plant through a steelworkers’ cooperative venture.

 Livingstone pointed to Mondragon International in Spain as an example of a worker-owned steelmaking co-operative.

 The last two alternatives, he said, will require community and political support.

 Livingstone noted the book suggests the workforce at Stelco–U.S. Steel in Hamilton is an experienced and highly skilled group that has not been effectively used by the company.

 “U.S. Steel and Stelco were probably the most hierarchical companies in North America that paid little attention to workers’ knowledge,” he said, adding U.S. Steel is not doing any research and development in Hamilton either.

 “Zilch, nothing and no prospect of it either.” Smith, who was Local 1005 president from 1997 to 2003, said he agreed to help with the book to publicize the workers’ point of view.

 “There just isn’t enough of the union’s story told ever and when you have an opportunity to be part of telling that story, you should do everything you can,” said Smith, who strongly advocates the idea of turning U.S. Steel in Hamilton into a workers’ co-op.

“In this capitalist system that we all strive under, does the worker always have to be a tool, a pawn and a victim?” Smith said he believes there is a future for steelmaking in Canada and that U.S. Steel is closing the Hamilton plant to protect jobs south of the border.

 Work on the book began in 1982 thanks to a research grant from Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

 “It was the first year after the massive layoffs (at Stelco in Hamilton),” said Livingstone, who noted they wanted to look at how the layoffs and the decline of the steel industry in Hamilton affected Stelco Hilton Works employees and their families.

 “The study was strongly supported by 1005,” said Livingstone.

 The union provided membership lists and other information to the researchers while the company did not wish to participate.

 Livingstone said about 300 steelworkers and their spouses were interviewed in 1983-84 and re-interviewed 10 years later to see how they were coping with changes to the Canadian steel industry and the massive layoffs.

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STELCO MANAGERS UNDER FIRE IN NEW BOOK

 A look at Hamilton’s steel past and future through a new academic book by two profs and Warren Smith, former 1005 chair.

            A new study of Stelco’s long and painful decline blames part of the problem on managements’ failure to hire new workers.

 Manufacturing Meltdown: Reshaping Steel Work, to be released next week by Fernwood Publishing, the authors say the company suffered serious competitive disadvantages because managers went almost 20 years with no meaningful hiring.

 That action, couples with repeated layoffs of its youngest employees, left the company facing a wave of coming retirements that would wipe out almost its entire body of knowledge about how the giant steel mill actually works.

 “We could see the problem developing in 1998, and things have only gotten worse since then,” said Warren Smith, co-author of the study and a former president of the United Steel Workers Local 1005. “The company just wasn’t seeing what was coming at them.”

 “Now that company is facing this wall of retirements, and it’s all because of really bad planning at the management level,” he added.

 Smith co-authored a study with retired University of Toronto sociologists David Livingstone and Dorothy Smith.

 They trace Stelco’s problems back to the early 1980s, when Canada started to feel the effects of the world’s ability to produce about 20 percent more steel than it needed. Until then, companies such as Stelco and Dofasco had been efficient and profitable enterprises. But as foreign companies doubled their share of the Canadian market to 30 percent and prices fell, Canada’s companies were caught in a vise.

 Managers responded in business school textbook fashion, slashing hundreds of jobs and preaching a gospel of productivity. Around the world it meant a loss of 1.5 million steel mill jobs by 2000, about two-thirds of 1975’s workforce. In Canada, total steel mill employment fell by half between 1980 and 1992, from 60,000 to 30,000 jobs.

 At Stelco, that translated into almost 16,000 lost jobs between 1981 and 2003, cutting the labour force to about 9,000 from 26,000. Today in Hamilton, the production workforce is less than 900.

 “That drive to slash employment was coupled by a desperate management effort to restructure the way work was done in the plant,” Smith said. The new mantra became flexibility, and managers started a campaign to compress more than 1,000 job descriptions into as few as possible.

 “Having that many job descriptions really limits what you can use an individual for. Now, as for as the company is concerned, all those job classes are gone.”

 In place of specialization, Stelco moved to blended jobs, such as maintenance-operator.

 “The idea was that when the machine went down, the operator could fix it, but that never worked, “Smith said.  The company didn’t have to put people through seven years of apprenticeship, then give him some control over his work. He ends up with less overall skill, but you can work him all day because he never runs out of things to do.”

 Serious layoffs at Stelco started after the 1981 strike. Under the rule of seniority it was the last-hired who were the first to go, amputating the youngest part of the workforce first, resulting in a steadily aging staff inching ever closer to possible retirement.

 In 1981, the average Stelco worker was 37 and 13 years on the job. More than 40 percent were under 35 and fewer than 40 percent were over 45.

 By 1989, under the effects of mass layoffs of younger workers and the first wave of early retirements, the average age was 45 and the average seniority was 21 years.

 With virtually no hiring and more retiring, the workforce aged rapidly, to an average age of 50 and seniority of 28 years by 2003. By then, only around 10 percent of workers left were under 45.

 After the mass layoffs of 1984, there were very few workers under age 25, and by 1996 virtually no one under 30. Bay late 2009 there were fewer than 1,000 workers and of those, 200 were eligible to retire.

 Despite repeated warnings by union leaders about a looming labour shortage, management only started to respond in 1999 when 300 new workers, dubbed the “Millennium Kids,” were finally brought in.

 “They just kept letting the workforce get smaller and smaller, and wouldn’t acknowledge they were facing this wall of retirements, “Smith said. “They didn’t understand that you can’t keep behaviour like piranhas and hope something good will happen.”

 He said, “The company has really suffered from the failure to listen to their workers. That legacy has been quite persistent and has just worsened the previous conditions. The knowledge of its workforce is critical to the competitiveness of the company. It’s a basic reason whey U.S. Steel and Stelco continued to suffer.”

 The only way the company’s strategy makes sense, the book says, is that U.S. Steel sees the future of the former Stelco as noting more than a supplier of raw materials to its U.S. mills, where value-added work will be performed and the finished steel sold back to Canadian customers.

 That doesn’t have to be the ed. Livingstone cites Lakeside Steel’s efforts for intervenor status in a suit against U.S. Steel by Ottawa over broken job and production promises. Lakeside wants a forced sale of former Stelco assets.

 While he doesn’t think Lakeside would be a good purchaser – he thinks the venture funds that would finance such a deal would want a quick flip of the company – he notes “there’s any number of companies just salivating at the chance to break into the North American market and they’re looking at Canadian companies”

 “There are real alternatives available, but they are slipping away from us,” Smith concludes.

– Steve Arnold, The Hamilton Spectator, 12 February 2011

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 Authors D.W. Livingstone, Dorothy, E. Smith (both sociologists) and Warren Smith (retired steelworker and former local union president) examine the last forty years at the Stelco (now U.S. Steel) Hilton Works steel plant in Hamilton, Ontario in an effort to shed light on the effects of the global steel decline not only on local steelworkers, but also on the steel sector and Canadian manufacturing in general. They have put together a case study which succeeds at providing important insights into the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production and its continual restructuring of industries in response to overcapacity and crisis, often resulting in labour displacement and other major structural and organizational changes. 

Manufacturing Meltdown is an especially timely foray into the subject in view of the current battle at Hilton Works between U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers of American Local 1005. Contract negtiations originally stalled when local 1005 refused the proposed changes to their pension program, and the resulting lockout has been ongoing since November 2010.–Ashley Titterton, Canadian Dimension, Volume 45 No3, May/June 2011.

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I approached the new Fernwood release Manufacturing Meltdown: Reshaping Steel Work by D.W. Livingstone, Dorothy Smith and Warren Smith (Fernwood Publishing, 2011, paperback: $27.95) from a rather different perspective than I approach most other historical works. Manufacturing Meltdown details over thirty years of research into the steel industry in Hamilton Ontario, my hometown. As the son of a boilermaker, growing up in a working class community and surrounded by the families of steelworkers throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, the material in this collection is particularly poignant as it revealed to me the driving macro-economic factors that shaped many of the events that characterized my childhood. David Livingstone’s solo contribution to the book, “Melting the Core Workforce, 1981-2003” was particularly useful in this regard as it describes the many factors that contributed to the steel crisis that seemed to grip Hamilton throughout much of my early memory. The downsizing and restructuring that Livingstone painstakingly details as Stelco tried to remain competitive in the global marketplace during the 1980s explained to me the larger forces at work that created so much anxiety in my neighbourhood. Reading through Livingstone’s account, I was reminded of my daily conversations with friends about Stelco and the fate of their fathers’ employment. Even at a rather young age, my friends knew where their fathers’ stood in regards to seniority and whether they had enough years served to hopefully protect them from lay-off. Those whose fathers’ had been laid off would know the exact number of weeks remaining on their Unemployment Insurance benefits and they would all endlessly hope for that magic word “recall,” which would return their fathers back to work.

It was these thoughts that for me animated Livingstone’s account of the steel industry in Hamilton during the 1980s. Certainly it is an exhaustive account, more than can be summarized in a brief review. However, I think Livingstone’s emphasis on the shifting work practices and pressures brought by management to restructure Stelco’s Hilton Works with an ever-shrinking workforce and the resistance of workers to management dictates that they intuitively knew to be an attack on not only themselves, but on the quality and dignity of their work is a fascinating example of the dynamic of class-conflict played out on the shop-floor and within the work process itself.

Indeed, as with many other critical accounts of the labour process, it is always inspiring to witness the degree too which workers possess an intimate knowledge of their jobs and their craft. Dorothy Smith and Stephan Dobson’s contribution to the story of steel work in Hamilton provides a detailed look at how workers learn and transmit skills in the workplace and the community. If Livingstone offers us a macro-economic look at the steel industry in Hamilton, Smith and Dobson bring us back down to the micro-level, revealing the ways in which experiential knowledge is acquired and disseminated among the working class.

Smith and Dobson illustrate how the historical processes of skills transmission within the working class have increasingly been appropriated by management and effectively “outsourced” to state education institutions as part of the overall process of “credentialization” that has become so endemic within the contemporary labour market. As Smith and Dobson argue, this process of appropriating workers’ knowledge for the benefit of management not only allows for tighter management control over the work process, but effectively disempowers workers as control over these skills and knowledge allowed workers a modicum of job security and protection. Smith and Dobson’s in-depth discussion with individual steelworkers provides us with a window into the hidden socio-cultural practices of working class communities and demonstrates the deep knowledge that workers possess. Their interviews provide a powerful corrective to common-sense assumptions that industrial workers are mere “automatons” with little skill and no knowledge of the work process. This in itself is an important, but unfortunately much neglected, insight into the skills and learning that working class people acquire both on the shop floor and within their families and communities.

While it is usually unfair to criticize a work for what was left out, I would have liked a consideration of how class-consciousness and trade union consciousness are transmitted from older to younger workers added to this section. Given the access the researchers had to individual steelworkers and the candid nature of the workers responses, it seemed an opportune venue to explore how these workers view the economic system and their place within it. That being said, much can be discerned from the voices of the workers themselves, although it would have been a welcome addition if the authors could have brought their considerable insight and knowledge to this question.

The final section of Manufacturing Meltdown addresses the future of steel jobs in an era when one could be excused for not seeing much of a future for the steel industry in Canada given recent events. Summarizing the sordid details of the recent bankruptcy at Stelco and the “graying” of the remaining workforce, the authors acknowledge that the steel industry faces many challenges in the years ahead. The authors remain cautiously optimistic however, pointing to alternative models of worker self-management and sustainable development as the way forward. Many of my childhood friends aspired to follow in their fathers’ footsteps and become steelworkers themselves. Hopefully if the authors’ vision comes to pass, steelwork can be restored as a dignified, high-paying and highly-skilled occupation, rekindling those aspirations among Hamilton’s youth.

Simon Enoch is Director of the Saskatchewan Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. A Hamilton native, he holds a M.A. in Work and Society from McMaster University and a PhD in Communication and Culture from Ryerson University.

—Activehistory.ca, April 2011.

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