January 16, 2000

To: All Steelworkers
From: George Becker
Subject: A Message From Pittsburgh

Happy New Year! Well, we’ve survived the start of a new century and a new millennium, but we have carried over a lot of major problems and opportunities that we will need to work even harder on this year. We’ve got a fair number of long, tough collective bargaining struggles to try to resolve. While we organized a larger number of new members last year than in most years in recent memory, we still have to dramatically increase our organizing success. And, of course, issues related to global trade will continue to threaten the job security of our members. So there is a lot of work ahead of us.

Martin Luther King. This weekend and tomorrow we pause to remember and honor the work of Martin Luther King who fought so valiantly and successfully against the forces of racial discrimination and hatred. In particular, we should not forget that he was killed while preparing to lend support to a worker strike, thereby underlining the important fact that the cause of workers and the cause of civil rights are closely linked.

China Trade Relations. Each year Congress considers whether to grant Most Favored Nation’s trading status (MFN) to China. Now President Clinton has announced a major push to get Congress to pass a bill that will make that status permanent. He’s even changed the name from "most favored nations" to "normal trade relations (NTR). The business community strongly supports the initiative. We oppose it. China is noted for employing prison labor, slave labor and child labor as well as for preventing the development of free trade unions and for violating the human rights of its citizens on a widespread basis. Now is not the time to grant them permanent MFN status. We need to keep the pressure on them to change. Opinions vary as to when the bill will come before the Congress for a vote. Some say April; some say June or July. Clinton and the business community are gearing up now. We need to counter it.

Gore supports Titan strikers. Accompanied by Senator Tom Harkin, Vice President Al Gore visited with our Local 164 Titan strikers at the picketlines in DesMoines, Iowa for about an hour last Saturday. The visit follows a mid-December stopover at the Cleveland LSE operation of LTV Steel where he talked to our members and listened to their concerns.

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