Making Steel for Offshore Wind Turbines, Now With Union Labor
In a slow month for large-unit elections, the United Steelworkers won a key victory at JSW Steel, which manufactures components for offshore wind turbines. Despite their green, ethical self-portrayal, the union says JSW fought them hard.
The United Steelworkers headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 7, 2024. (Justin Merriman / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The homepage of JSW Steel USA’s website features wind turbines and the tagline “Sustainable steel for a stronger tomorrow.” They also brag that they have “the most energy-efficient and lowest carbon-emitting method of steelmaking” and are “sowing seeds for a greener future.” For their greening efforts, they’ve received $43.5 million from the Department of Energy to improve their Mingo Junction, Ohio, facility, which produces steel slabs used in offshore wind construction.
This same facility recently unionized after a 117–105 victory in its NLRB election tallied on March 7, leading to 248 new members for the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied & Industrial and Service Workers International Union (USW). Despite the green, ethical image portrayed on its website, the union says JSW has fought the union by hiring an outside attorney and union-busting consultants, holding “union education” meetings, and even firing three union supporters the Monday after the votes were counted. Union supporters say they have been harassed and threatened throughout; one recently received text messages from anti-union people that “we’re gonna kick your ass in the parking lot.” Management also allowed anti-union graffiti throughout the plant. One of those messages was “Get cancer and DIE yes voters.”
This is the third election that USW has run at the Mingo Junction facility; the previous one was lost by one vote. Since then, there’s been some significant turnover but the same complaints, even after management changes and promises to improve the working conditions at the plant. This last election campaign really only kicked off a few months ago, but much like the United Auto Workers’ win at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, this effort was years in the making.
According to Director of Organizing Maria Somma, USW has been focused on building its organizing capacity to take on more large industrial campaigns like the one at JSW. Somma cited a number of other recent, large-scale wins, including approximately 12,000 new USW members across three units — faculty, staff, and graduate workers — at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as 800 workers at Bobcat’s farm and construction equipment manufacturing plant in Bismarck, North Dakota, 1,500 workers at the Blue Bird Corporation’s bus manufacturing facility in Fort Valley, Georgia, and 600 miners on the Iron Range in Minnesota.
She stressed that “there’s a big difference between organizing a large industrial shop and organizing in the service sector.” Given the threats of relocating industrial plants, as well as the physical intimidation that workers can face in an organizing drive, helping workers take this step requires a lot of one-on-one conversations. Nevertheless, Somma feels like USW is well-positioned “to help workers feel and harness their own power” and to continue winning large shops.
A Dearth of Large Elections
This monthly roundup is devoted to all NLRB representation elections of 250 or more eligible voters. There was a noticeable dearth of such elections this past month. At 248 voters, USW’s win at JSW Steel was the largest single-union representation election win of the month. Time will tell whether this is an anomaly or representative of a cooling of organizing efforts given current political developments at the federal level.
Unfortunately it was also a month of mostly large-unit losses, and it was unusually one with no large-unit elections in either academia or health care. SEIU 32BJ’s win at Prospect Airport Services was the largest representation election win of the month, but it was a two-union election, victories which are generally not promoted. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ win at Lamb Weston was the largest election win of the month, but it was a decertification election.
It’s possible that we’ll see more decertification elections as employers are emboldened by the Trump administration. Teamsters Local 839, which represents workers at the Lamb Weston facility, challenged the employer’s decertification petition, as eighty workers whose names were on the decertification petition claim that they signed no such document. Still the NLRB ran the election anyway, which the union won handily.
The local’s secretary-treasurer, Russell Shjerven, said that given the current political environment, “I do think companies are going to be a lot more cutthroat. Look at a place like Lamb Weston, which has so many plants, and so many are nonunion. They would rather just have a nonunion facility.” Still, he thinks that the current assault on unions might backfire and stir up new interest in seeking union protections:
I live in the reddest, most pro-Trump congressional district in the state of Washington. But the people around here really want to see the union environment thrive. . . . Hopefully the attack on workers wakes more people up to say, “Hey, we need protection, and we need to make sure that we have someone fighting for us and that we work under a good contract.”