WARREN Deal's death 'shocked' CSC union

The news was a surprise to workers who were waiting for the steel mill to reopen.
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
WARREN -- William "Skip" Powell considers himself "one of the lucky ones."
One of hundreds laid off when CSC Ltd. shut down operations in April, the Warren man went back to school in May. At 43, he's less than a year away from completing a course in heating and air conditioning at ETI Technical College of Niles.
His wife works and has health benefits, Powell said, and the couple never went wild with spending, even when he was working seven days a week at the steel bar mill with plenty of overtime.
"We were lucky. We never over-extended ourselves," the 23-year CSC veteran said pensively.
Leaders of Local 2243 of the United Steelworkers of America say many of the union's 1,120 members, like Powell, have found new jobs or are retraining themselves for new careers.
Hundreds more were waiting, however, hoping for the success of a mill buyout deal that fell through Monday.
John Kubilis, president, said union leaders were "shocked" when they learned through the press Monday evening that Renaissance Partners, a regional management buyout firm, was dropping its plans to buy and reopen CSC.
"We were never led to believe that the deal was not going through," Kubilis said.
Union leaders had been told that Renaissance planned to buy the mill directly from its bank owners, thus circumventing an Oct. 1 deadline set for the sale by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Youngstown.
Contract talks: Renaissance officials had been negotiating a revised contract for Local 2243 as part of a plan to reorganize the business and ready it for a slow startup. The only items yet to be settled were health benefits, some pension issues and recall rights, Kubilis said.
He acknowledged that the local hadn't met with Renaissance officials for three weeks, but they were ready to resume talks anytime.
"We had our bags packed. We were as optimistic as hell," said Fred Spahlinger, local vice president and a 34-year CSC veteran. "Those issues were tough ones, but they weren't deal-breakers."
Indeed, Leo Keevican Jr., a managing director of Renaissance, said the union pact was just one of several factors that prompted investors to drop the CSC project.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the resulting damage to the economy brought many other businesses to their knees, he said, expanding the investment opportunities open to the buyout firm. He said those new possibilities, combined with other hurdles the company still faced with CSC, led to the decision.
The union had been working on an employee buyout of the mill and was in talks with some potential investors earlier this year, but Kubilis said those possibilities also fell away as the months progressed.
Renaissance said at first that it might consider partnering with workers in an employee stock ownership plan, Kubilis said, but told the union about three months ago that it was no longer interested in that option.
Letdown: Kubilis said union leaders feel the federal government let them and other struggling steel companies down by waiting too long to tighten enforcement of the nation's trade laws, allowing foreign steel dumping to strangle the domestic steel industry.
He praised the local and state officials who helped put together a package of loans and incentives that would have been available to a new CSC owner. CSC workers do qualify for federal Trade Adjustment Assistance which extends their unemployment benefits for up to a year and helps to fund up to two years of retraining.
Kubilis said his position as president of Local 2243 might soon be gone, but the union will continue. It represents workers at several other area companies, including Concord Steel, Ohio Star Forge and Philip Metals Inc., all in Warren.
CSC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January and has been looking for more than a year for a buyer to operate the mill. The next step, now that the Renaissance deal has been canceled, is to sell the mill piecemeal at auction, probably at the end of the month. Buyers can purchase parts of the mill or its equipment before the auction, but court orders require that they pay 70 percent or more of the appraised price.