p m said:
This is how the steel mills disappeared from the Appalachians. The jobs haven't come back.
Blue said:
Yes, but should the jobs have been there in the first place? You can keep a patient on life support out of compassion but you can't keep an industry on it.
Blueboy said:
Andrew Carnegie thought it was a good place to make steel.
Jaime
Y'all are right...
Yes, it was a good place to make steel because of the abundance of coal, iron ore and the river system access (Ohio to Mississippi), plus rail to the east.
But the steel companies got fat and lazy. They didn't innovate - new products, newer, more efficient production methods (See: NuCor). The labor contracts got bloated: too many benefits, too hard to fire workers. It eventually caught up to them in the 70s/80s, until the last steel mill in Pittsburgh went away in the mid-90s (there are still mini-mills in SW PA).
This decade, a businessman (can't remember the name) bought
Betehhlem Steel and a few other steel companies, filled bankruptcy, dumped the union contracts and pension liabilities, and now has a profitable business. It's leaner, more efficient.
Sound familiar?
When I lived in Pittsburgh in the 90s, I heard all of the same complaints/sad stories/etc. that I now hear in MI. It's a painful transition, and it's going to hurt a lot of low/no-skilled workers.