However, … U.S. Steel announced in April it was laying off about 2,700 workers with a notice that was sent to as many as 6,500 employees nationwide amid the COVID-19 crisis. Tens of thousands of steelworkers and iron ore miners are losing their jobs as demand disappears and steel mills throughout the country close down and production scales back. Incidentally, X restarted two blast furnaces at Granite City in … Declining prices and demand for oil and natural gas has meant a halt to most gas drilling and pipeline construction. Granite City Works facility in Granite City, Ill., on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017. The wiping out of jobs in steel production is another nail in the coffin for the United States coal mining industry. United States Steel Corp. (IW 500/73) announced it would be idling operations at the Granite City, Illinois, plant. U.S. Steel will borrow $800 million from a stand-by credit facility, and slash its 2020 spending by $125 million, as global demand collapses. The price of hot-rolled coiled steel, the industrial benchmark, has fallen 18 percent from $608 a ton in January to less than $500 a ton presently. Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel said in a filing Thursday that it sent out notices of plans for layoffs to 6,500 employees, but that it expects the actual number affected to be about 2,700. The montage ad shows Trump in a personalized white hardhat at a U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, Illinois, in 2018. Even before the impact of the coronavirus, the decline in steelmaking was well underway. Steel mills are closing and layoffs mount in the United States steel industry as manufacturers are in their worst crisis in history following the coronavirus pandemic. Hibbing Taconite will end mining May 3 while all of its 650 workers will be laid off. The company gave notice last Friday to federal and local governments that it would be laying off thousands of employees around the country, including several hundred at its facility in Granite City. The blast furnaces are less expensive and more profitable when running at near full capacity, becoming money losers when capacity utilization falls below 82 percent. Granite City Works blast furnaces and its steelmaking facilities were idled in December 2015, resulting in layoffs of more than 2,000 workers. New car and appliance sales have almost ceased to exist as tens of millions of workers have been thrown out of work. US Steel and ArcelorMittal were themselves aggressively moving towards electric furnaces before the onset of the coronavirus. Granite City has seen its fair share of layoffs in the past two decades. Granite City Works facility in Granite City, Ill., on July 26, 2018. United States Steel is also closing its tube mills in Lorain, Ohio and in Lone Star, Texas. U.S. Steel notified employees that they would lay off as many as 737 workers at the Granite City plant in late April following news that major auto companies would stop production at many plants as COVID cases spiked across the country. U.S. Steel says it expects to complete the electric arc furnace (EAF) at Tubular as planned, with first arc anticipated in the second half of 2020. And while it’s expected to be temporary, more than 2,000 workers will be laid off beginning May 28, according to the Chicago Tribune. The price is expected to drop further as demand continues drying up. International Committee of the Fourth International. U.S. Steel announced the restart of two blast furnaces at Granite City last year in a bid to capitalize on higher US steel prices. Building construction has stopped in many parts of the country and many will not resume as investors bail out of projects. U.S. Steel posted a $391 million loss in the first quarter of this year. St. Louis, MO – United States Steel has confirmed that it plans to lay off additional workers at its facility in Granite City. The Belleville News-Democrat reports about 2,000 workers will begin to be laid off on Dec. 27. As production and demand collapses, the USW is already pedaling the lie that there is nothing that can be done, and that workers have to wait and suffer until the economy opens up again. The United Steelworkers, which represent a shrinking but still significant number of steelworkers, is working with the companies to ensure an orderly shutdown of the mills. United States Steel’s corporate stock had lost 75 percent of its value, falling from the recent high of $48 in the beginning of 2018 to the $10-$12 range in December and January of this year and has since fallen even further—to the $5-$6 dollar range. United States Steel Salaries in Granite City, IL 56 salaries (for 44 job titles) Updated Mar 26, 2020 56 United States Steel employees have shared their salaries on Glassdoor. Late last year, US Steel bought a stake in electric furnace steelmaker Big River Steel for $700 million with the option to buy the rest of the Arkansas-based steelmaker by 2023. U.S. Steel says it will continue to assess the project timeline and remaining budget. Granite City has seen its fair share of layoffs in the past two decades. Steel coils sit outside at the U.S. Steel Corp. The “temporary” shutdown of U.S. Steel’s Granite City Works that was recently announced sent a shockwave of distress over the 2,000 workers that will soon face layoff and the city that relies on that mill. U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated U.S. Steel Corp’s decision to re-employ hundreds of laid-off workers and lamented decades of past leaders’ trade […] One-hundred workers with less than three years’ service are being laid off immediately while the other 260 employees will lose their jobs by the end of May. The corporations rely on older blast furnaces to produce steel while Nucor and Steel Dynamics rely primarily on the newer electric furnaces. Many smaller steel companies are also laying workers off. At one time the massive complex employed nearly 18,000 workers. March 30, 2020 Posted by DeAnne Toto On Friday, a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice was received by the Madison County Board office. Not long after United States Steel Corp. announced it would close it's Granite City Works, putting 2,100 people out of work, another steel company says it will lay off 363 employees. Natural gas and oil drilling have all but stopped as the price of oil plummets, even going into negative territory earlier this week as demand bottoms out. Granite City is a city in Madison County, Illinois, United States, within the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Daniel Acker. However, a much smaller number is expected to be laid off. The silhouette of idle blast furnaces are seen during sunrise at the U.S. Steel Corp. The three mills employ over 3,000 workers. It’s not known right now how long the layoffs will last. GRANITE CITY, Ill. (AP) — Temporary layoffs at the U.S. Steel mill in Granite City are expected to begin the week after Christmas. Liberty Steel in Georgetown County, South Carolina is laying off 130 workers as it scales back production, and Evraz Oregon Steel in Portland is laying off 230 out of 600 employees. During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly promised he would revive the steel industry through trade war measures primarily aimed at imports from China and Europe. 12/19/08By Adam Jadhav As the steel plant in Granite City is idled, U.S. Steel workers worry about the future of their jobs. This move comes with the plummeting oil prices that have hit the United States second largest steelmaker with a punch to the gut. The silhouette of idle blast furnaces are seen during sunrise at the U.S. Steel Corp. The U.S. Steel Granite City Works could see a reduction in its workforce. The U.S. Steel Granite City Works could see a reduction in its workforce. The union represents about 19-hundred workers at the plant. The only way to oppose the relentless job- and wage-cutting demands and ensure that production is run safely is to unite the entire working class to transform the steel industry into a public enterprise under the democratic control and collective ownership of the working class. The impact of the coronavirus and the global depression will accelerate the overproduction of steel and the attack on the jobs of steelworkers. GRANITE CITY — U.S. Steel on Friday reported it plans to lay off several thousand employees nationwide, including about 700 at Granite City Works. In a statement U.S. Steel spokesperson Amanda Malkowski said the layoffs were due to “challenging market conditions.” The Socialist Equality Party urges steelworkers to form rank-and-file factory committees to take the conduct of the struggle out of the hands of the USW, which is nothing but a tool of corporate management and the government. Currently, steel mills are operating at 56 percent of capacity, down from 80 percent in 2019 according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. Before the pandemic, US Steel, Nucor and ArcelorMittal all brought additional capacity online in anticipation of greater demand. 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