Word: steele
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...steel, utility, and other pollution-heavy industries figure that they will save 10% to 35% of their compliance costs. Du Pont predicts that the bubble policy will reduce annual pollution-control expenses at its 52 largest plants from $136 million to $55 million. Big companies have estimated that environmental control accounts for 77% of their federal regulatory costs...
Like an aging heavyweight gone to flab, U.S. industry has fallen behind some of its world-class competitors. Many steel, rubber, auto and other essential plants have become outmoded because not enough capital has been invested in them. If the nation is to restore its technological edge, U.S. industry will have to modernize by building new factories and closing inefficient plants...
Nowhere is the need for this conversion process more acute than in the hulking, old steel industry. Fully 26% of its plant is outdated, and replacing it with the best technology available will require tens of billions of dollars. Last week the largest producer, U.S. Steel, took some belated steps on the route to conversion, at least two years after most of its competitors had already done so. The company by the end of 1981 will shut down 15 older plants and mills in eight states, laying off 13,000 of its 100,000 steelworkers. Among the closings: the Youngstown...
...productive. The domestic industry still leads its major foreign competitors in productivity. In fact, it is doing considerably better than European rivals, who also suffer from aged plants and surging costs. But the Japanese are rapidly gaining in the productivity race. They earn less but produce almost as much steel per worker as their American competitors. Over the past decade, productivity growth in the domestic industry has declined from 3% a year to 2%, while wages and benefits have risen from $5.38 to $16.53 for hourly workers, making the 455,000 U.S.W. members among the best-rewarded in the nation...
...fear of strikes every three years when the union contract came up for renewal that led steel customers to buy still more imports to hedge their supplies. But when steel imports rose from a 13.4% share of the domestic market in 1975 to 17.7% in 1977, the Carter Administration imposed minimum or "trigger" prices for imports based on a complex formula. Imports have fallen off to 14% in this year's first nine months, and the trigger price was reduced 1% to $347.55 a ton for the third quarter. But with the yen weakening almost 23% against the dollar...