U.S. Steel Hamilton Works lockout of their union workers is now entering its second week. Steel Market Update has been following the developments between USW Local 1005 and the U.S. Steel contract offer which the company has termed as their last offer.

The two sticking points between the company proposal and the position of Local 1005 bargaining committee is the issue of changes in the pensions for “new hires” as well as the elimination of “indexing” for the 9,000 retirees.

The issue of remaining locked out without voting on the existing offer on the table has created a debate within Local 1005 and the overall steel community.

Steel Market Update(SMU) does not have an opinion one way or the other about this subject but, we did want to provide people a forum within which they could present their opinions. Thus, we have done two surveys asking those interested about this topic.

Our second survey stemmed from Union President Rolf Gerstenberger asking SMU if we would pose this question: “Is it democratic to allow 900 workers at USS Hamilton to vote to eliminate indexing for 9,000 retired workers?”

SMU has received so many comments and responses to this survey that we wanted to share the comments and opions presented with you. If you are interested in reading the responses we have gathered (65 strong when we last checked), click here.

If you choose to return to the survey at various times during the day, refresh your screen every so often to see the latest comments and totals.

If you have not taken the survey and would like to be involved, click here.

Thank you to all that have participated and left us your comments. We will continue keeping up with the developments on this, and if you would like to try a free trial of our newsletter, click here.