Posted on 06/03/2012 5:34:39 PM PDT by Son House
Layoffs will begin on Monday for workers at RG Steel in Warren.
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week in Delaware. The financial problems will idle plants in Warren, West Virginia and Maryland. Over a thousand employees are effected.
RG Steel said that despite cost reductions and improvements, it has been unable to succeed in the current market.
The company is looking to sell its operations.
Anyone working at a steel company since the 80’s must have known that eventually this would happen.
Predatory gov't melding.
Should we start building furnaces in our backyards?
It’s amazing how much steel we produced in 1939.
USA = 51.4 million tons
Germany = 23.3 million tons
USSR = 18.8 million tons
UK = 13.2 million tons
France = 6.2 million tons
Japan = 5.8 million tons
Italy = 2.3 million tons
http://www.euronet.nl/users/wilfried/ww2/1939.htm
What happened to our steel industry?
For the most part, steel was superseded in many applications by superior materials -- concrete, aluminum, plastic, fiberglass, etc.
For example, most auto bodies used to be 100% steel. Now, I'd be surprised if they're 25% steel.
Related, BHP Billiton;
http://www.bhpbilliton.com/home/aboutus/ourcompany/Pages/default.aspx
We are among the world’s largest producers of major commodities, including aluminium, copper, energy coal, iron ore, manganese, metallurgical coal, nickel, silver and titanium minerals, and uranium along with substantial interests in oil and gas.
BHP Billiton freezes major project approvals
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-30/bhp-freezes-major-project-approvals/4042638
The world’s biggest miner, BHP Billiton, says it is freezing all board-level major project approvals for six months.
The statement by BHP Billiton’s chief executive Marius Kloppers reinforces a warning earlier this month by the miner’s chairman Jacques Nasser that the company would scale back its $80 billion investment plans.
The message was delivered directly to its major customer, China, through a major Chinese news agency.
“You should not expect in the next six months any new major approval of projects,” he told Caixin Media.
“The economics of some of these projects is changed. I think for the next two years, 18 months perhaps, will we just wait and see how things develop.”
Worked there when it was WCI and shortly after it was purchased by Severstal. Those plants will be purchased by someone else. Same with the TK mill in Mobile, Alabama.
Yes, just thinking the price of everything steel is going to rise, should have kept that old Plymouth..and how about just a steel penny?
I know one thing made from mostly steel that’s certainly rising.........firearms.
I am not a fan of false media stories, like America's manufacturing is hollow or the right wing is made up of racists and knuckledragging idiots. We need to work on getting people to work, to get more young people into manufacturing because the jobs are going without skilled employees. We also need some honest media.
How can this be????? nobama is in his third “summer of recovery”. clueless biden said he would make 500,000 jobs per month. This announcement must be lies...all lies (to embarrass the Won).
Thanks Son House.
I’d bet serious money that more than 50% are steel.
I work in manufacturing every day and it is hollowed out.
For instance, how many of our own machine tools do we make?
When you read the previous posts that Japan - a country with half the population of the US - makes 30% more steel you know who did the hollowing out.
I'm just talking the body -- not the chassis or the drive train. And you're estimate may well be right, by weight.
But the remains, there is a lot less steel in an automobile today than there was in the fifties or sixties.
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