Category: default || By jt3y

Wonders may never cease: U.S. Steel is repainting the Edgar Thomson Plant in Braddock. Over the past two weeks or so, the gray and brown patina of the long metal mill buildings along Braddock Avenue has been replaced, by a bright, clean coat of white paint, no less. (Can you imagine a steel mill being painted white 30 years ago? Pollution controls have come a long way.)

And there's big, shiny black lettering on the sides of the buildings now, too: "United States Steel Corporation." The general office building got a paint job, too, and a new sign. I can't remember the last time I saw a steel mill get a new coat of paint, although one of the buildings at Clairton Works got a billboard-style sign several years ago.

To paint the entire mill white signifies that pride, and a little swaggering confidence, is back in style at U.S. Steel. And why not? Profits were up 16 percent in the last quarter, Wall Street brokers like the company's stock (although they're a fickle lot), and U.S. Steel's gamble in Serbia is paying off, as Len Boselovic reported in a series of stories for the Post-Gazette.

True, basic steelmaking is far from healthy in this country. Several producers have been in and out of bankruptcy for the past 10 years, and LTV Steel dried up and blew away a few years ago. Pressure from state-subsidized steel mills in China and elsewhere --- who can crank out tons of product unhampered by such niceties as pollution controls, safety regulations or living wages --- has seen to that. Even steel producers that specialize in high-quality (and high margin) finished products are having trouble competing on a decidedly unlevel playing field.

But --- but! --- if you'd told me when I was a kid that U.S. Steel would still be around in 2005, and would be giving the Edgar Thomson Works a nice coat of white paint, I'd have thought you were crazy. Heck, if you'd have told anyone 20 years ago that we'd be rooting for U.S. Steel, they'd have said you were crazy. I know a lot of people who refused to buy gas at Marathon Oil when U.S. Steel bought it. Now, there's a Marathon station right on West Fifth Avenue --- you can see the stacks at Irvin Works from its parking lot --- and I've got a Marathon credit card.

And I always laugh when people tell me that Pittsburgh doesn't make steel any more. What are they making at Edgar Thomson, toothpicks? What are they rolling out at Irvin, draperies? What is all of that pipe at Camp-Hill Corp. in Our Fair City made out of, bamboo?

Of course, steel's contribution to the local economy is only a fraction of what it was years ago; while I don't know what the Mon-Yough area's economic future is based on, it seems unlikely that it's steelmaking.

I also suspect it's not retail and service jobs, despite the success of The Waterfront. Rob Rogers had a great cartoon in the P-G last week about the new Pittsburgh Mills shopping complex up near Tarentum. A steelworker is asking a diner waitress, "Remember when 'Pittsburgh Mills' meant American dominance in steel?" In the last panel, we see him behind the counter at the food court: "May I take your pretzel order?"

Indeed. If we all end up with service and retail jobs, to whom will we sell our greasy fast food and overpriced Chinese-made plastic tschotchkes? I suspect that not too many retail clerks can afford to eat at the restaurants in The Waterfront, other than maybe Chick-Fil-A, Steak 'n Shake and McDonald's. Even then, $5.75 an hour, minus taxes, doesn't stretch too far. There's a middle ground somewhere; we just haven't found it yet.

I also suspect --- no, I know --- that all of the malarkey we were sold during the '80s about retraining people for highly-paid jobs in healthcare, computer technology and the lot was just that. Not everyone is suited to sit behind a desk, and there isn't an infinite need for computer jockeys, anyway. We need some kind of employment where people who have skills and a willingness to work hard physically (rather than only mentally) are rewarded. I don't think the local economy --- let alone the American economy --- is going to stay healthy if manufacturing goes down the drain completely.

Anyway, that's for wiser minds than mine to puzzle over. I'm just happy to see U.S. Steel walking tall again in its second century.

Would I like to see some more manufacturing around the Mon-Yough area again? Uh, sure, but I'm not holding my breath.

For now, I'll accept the fresh paint at E.T. It beats the hell out of a "For Sale" sign any day of the week.

...

In other news, they're ice-skating in hell today, and was that a pig that just flew past my window? Great googly-moogly, I agree with the Post-Gazette editorial board, which says much the same thing I wrote in the Tuesday Almanac ("For Whom the Bell Knolls") about the made-for-media Catherine Baker Knoll "controversy":

But with the greatest sympathy to the family, some of the other objections to Mrs. Knoll's presence at the funeral seem based on misconceptions. Most funerals are not private and the obituary notice in the paper did not say this one was. Indeed, the church in Carnegie was filled to overflowing for the funeral on July 19 -- and not all of this crowd would have been "invited." ...

It is a good thing -- not bad -- that Mrs. Knoll has been going to funerals for fallen servicemen -- and not just that of Staff Sgt. Goodrich. The state of Pennsylvania should be represented on such occasions, as a mark of respect and sympathy from the highest levels of the state government.

Huzzah, says the Almanac. Great minds think alike ... or at least this one and the ones at the P-G do, on this issue.