Granite City Works plans to once again produce steel when one of the two blast furnaces at the metro-east mill gets up and running this weekend after being idle for over two years.
Craig McKey, president of United Steelworkers 1899, said the lead-up to this weekend’s resumption of steelmaking at 2 a.m. Saturday has been exciting for him and other members.
“Can’t wait to see them first orange slabs coming down through the caster,” McKey said. “I know everybody is excited about it.”
The reignition of the blast furnace marks the latest chapter in a story of uncertainty for steelworkers and the community that’s long relied on that labor to fuel the local economy. Saturday’s planned restart has been seen by the union members as a temporary win and an opportunity to prove their worth to new owners, despite having no long-term assurances the mill will remain open.
“All we’ve got to do is run,” McKey said. “We are very good and competitive within the corporation, as long as we’re hitting our targets, making our tonnage and heats. So, all we need to do is be successful, get a successful startup, and I think the rest will show itself.”
U.S. Steel, which is now owned by the Japanese company Nippon, announced in December it would restart the second blast furnace in the first half of this year due to rising customer demand.
Just a couple of months prior to that announcement, U.S. Steel planned to further wind down processing in Granite City — but backtracked shortly after.
Steel mill jobs
The return of one of the two blast furnaces means 1,110 employees are now working at the mill, and the company is still hiring, McKey said. In the end, the union will bring back about 450 positions, and the total count of employees will stand closer to 1,300.
Before being purchased by Nippon, U.S. Steel temporarily idled the second blast furnace in fall 2023, but that decision quickly became indefinite and led to a few hundred employees being laid off. U.S. Steel idled its other furnace in 2019.
While the production portion of the mill hasn’t run in more than two years, Granite City Works has been processing steel slabs shipped in from other plants.
Under the national security agreement signed by the companies and the Trump administration when U.S. Steel was sold to Nippon, Granite City Works is only protected from being further idled, closed or sold until June 2027.
A spokesman for Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel said the company was in the process of bringing the furnace online. It did not answer questions about the mill’s long-term future.
McKey expects the union to get more clarity on its future when its members begin contract negotiations in Pittsburgh this summer.
The company also did not disclose how much it spent to restart the second furnace in Granite City. McKey estimated it could be around $30 million.
“Anytime they invest that amount of money, it’s not like they’re going to start us up and shut us right back down,” McKey said this week.
Since December’s announcement, it’s been “guns blazing” to get the blast furnace up and running again, McKey said. In addition to hiring, there’s been a lot of work with the bricks lining the furnace that melts iron ore into liquid form.
“Our folks are very excited to get this plant up and running,” he said. “I know it’s always a challenge when you have a lot of new folks coming in, but I’m very confident that the experienced folks that stuck around will get those people doing the right things. I’m sure we’re going to have a successful startup.”
