WASHINGTON -- Bethlehem Steel Corp. President Walter Williams said Wednesday the decision to eliminate 10,000 jobs at two Bethlehem plants is irreversible.
A union official, appearing on television with Williams, warned of a possible strike at one of the plants this summer and predicted the Northeast 'is going to become a welfare state.'
'I can't foresee any actions or new data that will come out that will cause us to reverse our decision at this time,' Williams told NBC's 'Today' program when asked if plans to slash 10,000 jobs from the firm's Lackawanna, N.Y., and Johnstown, Pa., plants could be turned around.
Joseph Haefner, a United Steelworkers official interviewed in Buffalo, N.Y., said, 'If there's not going to be a contract, either there's going to be a lockout by the company or a strike' this summer.
'I personally believe that western New York and the northeast corner of this country is going to become a welfare state.'
Williams said the cutback, reducing Bethlehem's steelmaking capacity by 15 percent in the next year, was taken 'primarily to stop the losses that we've been experiencing at the Lackawana plant and the Johnstown plant in the last couple of years.
He attributed the problem to 'non-competitive employment costs, and that applies to all of our plants, wages too high, labor practices that restrict and limit productivity, and many other factors such as the fact that the Lackawana plant has aging facilities, which in the more intensive and competitive market today are marginal in profitability.
'And finally,' Williams added, 'we just don't see the ability to recover in the future. We don't see any prospects for a profitable operation or we would continue.'
Haefner disagreed, saying the nation's No. 2 steelmaker 'has a very good facility here in Lackawana, one that could be highly profitable, but what this company has to do is to go into a different product mix. ... They have to be versatile. Lackawana just cannot exist on plain automotive business.'
Haefner said wages in Lackawana are the same as those paid to employees in other Bethlehem plants. Asked about lack of wage competitiveness with foreign steelmakers, he said, 'Overseas is a totally different situation and, of course, those people there are being subsidized by the federal government over there.'
America's steelmaking capacity shrank from 160 million tons in 1977 to 153 million tons this year. Bethlehem, which had laid off 130,000 workers prior to Monday's announcement, will eliminate another 3.5 million tons of capacity with its latest cutback.
Currently half of the country's steelworkers are laid off, and an estimated 50 percent of that number will never work in the steel industry again.
Bethlehem losses for the fourth quarter of 1982, including the cost of shutting down the plants, could be $1 billion, analysts said.
Williams said most of Bethlehem's facilities have been built to produce a certain product. 'There is very little flexibility in any steel plant once you establish a basic product line.'
Williams acknowledged the industry's need for 'government acknowledgement of the problem with imports as Mr. Haefner said, with subsidization.'
He said Bethlehem is trying to use new technology to solve problems. It also is examining all of its operations and product lines to identify marginal ones and 'do the best job we can of improving them, or else, as we've had to do most recently, close them down to keep the rest of the company viable.'
