The United Steelworkers of America have declared war on
Republican gubernatorial candidate Mitch Daniels.
Union leaders passed out literature starting at 5 a.m.
Monday at the gates of local steel mills urging members to
oppose Daniels.
They handed out bright orange stickers highlighting the
www.mitchlies.com Web site, paid for by Hoosiers for Free
Trade, and bright orange pamphlets that say “Mitch Daniels is
bad for your job, bad for steel and bad for Indiana.”
Local union presidents representing seven unions and 20,000
workers declared their campaign against Daniels officially has
begun.
It’s just the beginning, steelworkers said.
Steelworkers say any time Daniels is in Northwest Indiana
for a scheduled visit, they’ll show up in force to protest
him. They believe he would support outsourcing local jobs to
foreign countries and they despise his support of President
Bush’s decision to nix the tariffs on imported steel in
December.
Calling outsourcing a cancer, Tom Hargrove, president of
Ispat Inland’s union Local 1010, said he believes outsourcing
would spread if Daniels is elected governor.
“We’re here to say enough is enough,’’ Hargrove said.
“We’re going to do everything we can to stop Mitch Daniels.”
Daniels believes the issue is political and does not have
anything to do with steel, but is about Democrats keeping
control in the state. He also says the steelworkers do not
have their facts straight, because he does not support
outsourcing.
“It’s about partisan politics,’’ Daniels said just before
he went to Schererville to campaign briefly on Monday. “They
see their party’s stranglehold on state government going away
and they don’t like it.”
While the USWA traditionally supports Democratic
candidates, this is the first time local union presidents say
they’ve banded together to launch a vehement opposition to one
candidate.
They are favoring incumbent Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan but
plan to spend the coming weeks and months pointing out
Daniels’ flaws. While they aren’t wearing pro-Kernan stickers,
they are wearing anti-Daniels stickers.
The steelworkers say their anger stems from Daniels’
support of President Bush’s decision to cancel the tariffs on
foreign steel early.
“We have different views on all of these issues,’’ said
Michael Mitchell, president of the USWA Local 1014. “To me,
Mitch attacked us first, and we’re attacking back.”
Daniels said while he favored the tariffs at the beginning,
he believed if the program continued the fines on imported
steel would do more harm than good.
He also pointed out the price of hot-rolled steel has
soared to recent highs. Many analysts attribute the Chinese
steel industry, the weak U.S. dollar and steep raw material
prices to the price spikes.
Union leaders call the price hikes a “blip,” saying the
cost of steel will fall soon. They also believe thousands more
local jobs would be sent overseas if Daniels held the post of
governor.
He disagreed.
“They’re an arm of the Democratic party and they’re
entitled to press their case,’’ Daniels said. “You know, I
guess it would be preferable if the facts meant something to
them.”
In Northwest Indiana alone, Magnequench took its operations
from Valparaiso to China in the last year and Ispat Inland is
hiring 20 workers in India for information technology jobs.
Daniels said he doesn’t want to see local jobs lost to
other countries. “They’ve invented that,’’ he said of the
steelworkers. “With their side in control, Indiana has
outsourced hundreds of thousands of jobs out of state. Their
side hasn’t a clue how to fix it. I see workers every day in
industries that aren’t doing as well and would trade places if
they could.”
Regardless, the vocal steelworkers say they intend to lobby
against Daniels as much as possible.
“I think in Washington, D.C., they think we’re a set of
number and don’t have faces,’’ said Jerome Watson, president
of Local 1066. “They’re going to find out we have faces.”
Reporter Lisa Shidler can be reached at 648-3076 or by e-mail at lshidler@post-trib.com.
Daniels, unions at war
