U.S. Steel

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U.S. Steel Corporation
Type	Public (NYSE: X)
Founded	1901
Headquarters	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Key people	John P. Surma Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dan D. Sandman, Vice Chairman and Chief Legal & Administrative Officer, General Counsel and Secretary Gretchen Haggerty, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer John H. Goodish, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer John J. Connelly, Senior Vice President - Strategic Planning & Business Development Thomas W. Sterling, Senior Vice President - Human Resources and Business Services
Industry	Metals
Products	Steels integrated steel products mining real estate coal engineering rail transport consulting
Revenue	US$14.45 billion (2004)
Employees	48,000
Website	www.uss.com

The United States Steel Corporation NYSE: X is an integrated steel producer with major production operations in the United States and Central Europe. The company is the world's ninth-largest steel producer ranked by sales (see list of steel producers). It was renamed USX Corporation in 1991 and subsequently United States Steel Corporation again in 2001 when the shareholders of USX spun off its steel-making assets following the acquisition of Marathon Oil in 1982. It is still the largest integrated steel producer in the United States, although it produces only slightly more steel than it did in 1902.

U.S. Steel is a former Dow Jones Industrial Average component listed from April 1, 1901 to May 3, 1991. It was removed under its USX Corporation name with Navistar International and Primerica Corporation.

[edit] History

J. P. Morgan and Elbert H. Gary founded U.S. Steel in 1901 (incorporated on February 25) by combining the steel operations owned by Andrew Carnegie with their holdings in the Federal Steel Company. At one time U.S. Steel was the largest steel producer and largest corporation in the world. The federal government attempted to use federal antitrust laws to break up U.S. Steel in 1911. That effort ultimately failed. Time and competitors have, however, accomplished nearly the same thing. In its first full year of operation, U.S. Steel made 67% of all the steel produced in the United States. It now produces less than 10%.

The Corporation, as it was known on Wall Street, always distinguished itself to investors by virtue of its size, rather than for its efficiency or creativeness during its heyday. In 1901 it controlled two-thirds of steel production. Because of heavy debts taken on at the company's formation — Carnegie insisted on being paid in gold bonds for his stake — and fears of antitrust litigation, U.S. Steel moved cautiously. Competitors often innovated faster, especially Bethlehem Steel Company, run by U.S. Steel's former first president, Charles M. Schwab. U.S. Steel's share of the expanding market slipped to 50% by 1911.

U.S. Steel's production peaked at more than 35 million tons in 1953. Its employment was greatest during World War II in 1943 when it had more than 340,000 employees. By 2000 it employed approximately 52,500 people. The federal government has also intervened on other occasions to try to control U.S. Steel. President Harry S. Truman attempted to take over its steel mills in 1952 to resolve a crisis with its union, the United Steelworkers of America. The Supreme Court of the United States blocked the takeover by ruling that the President did not have the constitutional authority to seize the mills. President John F. Kennedy was more successful in 1962 when he pressured the steel industry into reversing price increases that Kennedy considered dangerously inflationary. The federal government prevented U.S. Steel from acquiring National Steel in 1984 and political pressure from the United States Congress forced it to abandon plans to import British Steel slabs. It finally acquired National Steel's assets in 2003 after National Steel went bankrupt. U.S. Steel acquired Marathon Oil in 1982, as well as Texas Oil & Gas several years later. The corporation found itself at the end of the 20th century deriving much of its revenue and net income from its energy operations. U.S. Steel eventually spun off Marathon and non-steel assets, except Transtar, in October, 2001.

They were the sponsor of The US Steel Hour television program on CBS.

[edit] Labor

U.S. Steel maintained the labor policies of Andrew Carnegie, which called for high wages and limited unionization. The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers union that represented workers at the Homestead, Pennsylvania plant self-destructed after a violent strike in 1892. U.S. Steel defeated another strike in 1901, the year it was founded. U.S. Steel built the city of Gary, Indiana in 1906, 100 years later still the location of the largest integrated steel mill in the Northern Hemisphere. U.S. Steel did reach an impasse with unions during World War I, when under pressure from the Wilson Administration it relaxed its opposition to unions enough to allow some to operate in certain factories. It returned to its previous policies as soon as the war ended, however, and defeated union organizing efforts by William Z. Foster of the AFL, later a leader of the Communist Party of the United States of America.

Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp. of U.S. Steel, South Works, Chicago—Men Tapping an Electric Furnace, Silver Gelatin Print, ca. 1945.

During the 1920s U.S. Steel, like many other large employers, coupled paternalistic employment practices with "employee representation plans" (ERPs) which were company unions sponsored by management. Those ERPs, ironically enough, eventually became an important factor leading to the organization of the United Steelworkers of America. The company dropped its hard-line anti-union stance in 1937, when Myron Taylor, then President of U.S. Steel, agreed to recognize the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, an arm of the CIO led by John L. Lewis. Taylor was an outsider, brought in during the Great Depression to rescue U.S. Steel, and had no emotional investment in the company's long history of opposition to unions. Watching the upheaval caused by the United Automobile Workers' successful sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan and convinced that Lewis was someone he could deal with on a businesslike basis, Taylor sought stability through collective bargaining.

The Steelworkers continue to have a contentious relationship with U.S. Steel, but far less so than the relationship that other unions had with employers in other industries in the United States. They launched a number of long strikes against U.S. Steel in 1946 and 1959, but those strikes were over wages and benefits, not the more fundamental issue of union recognition that led to violent strikes elsewhere.

In 1959 a 116-day strike had a significant long-term effect on union-versus-management relations at U.S. Steel, by shutting down 90% of total U.S. steel production. This strike opened the door to steel imports, which had been a negligible factor before then. The long decline of the United States steel industry had begun. By the end of the 20th century thousands of unionised steelworker jobs would be permanently lost due to the effects of low cost imported steel.

The Steelworkers union attempted to mollify the problems of competitive foreign imports by entering into a so-called Experimental Negotiation Agreement (ENA) in 1974. This was to provide for arbitration in the event that the parties were not able to reach agreement on any new collective bargaining agreements, thereby preventing disruptive strikes. The ENA failed to stop the decline of the US steel industry.

U.S. Steel and the other employers terminated the ENA in 1984. In 1986 U.S. Steel locked out thousands of its employees when it shut down a number of its facilities as a result of a drop in orders on the eve of a threatened strike. Additionally, U.S. Steel and other steel producers demanded extensive concessions from their employees in the early 1980s through the direction of J Bruce Johnston, U.S. Steel Executive Vice President. In a letter to employees on strike in 1986 J Bruce Johnston noted, "There are not enough seats in the steel lifeboat for everybody." In addition to reducing the role of unions, the steel industry had sought to induce the federal government to take action to counteract dumping of steel by foreign producers at below-market prices. Neither the concessions nor anti-dumping laws have restored the industry to the health and prestige it once had.

[edit] Legacy

The Pittsburgh Steelers' logo, derived from the former USS logo

The U.S. Steel Tower in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is named after the company and the company's offices take up a part of the building. The Pittsburgh Steelers professional football team borrowed elements of its logo, a circle containing three hypocycloids, from U.S. Steel.

U. S. Steel financed and constructed the Unisphere in Corona Park, Queens, New York for the 1964 World's Fair. It is the largest globe ever made and is one of the world's largest free standing sculptures.

The Chicago Picasso sculpture was fabricated by United States Steel Corporation in Gary, Indiana before being disassembled and relocated to Chicago

The Contemporary Resort and Disney's Polynesian Resort at Walt Disney World

[edit] Dividends

It is the present policy of the Board of Directors to consider the declaration of dividends four times each year, with checks for dividends declared on common stock mailed for receipt on the 10th of March, June, September and December. The current dividend as of 2005 is 40 cents per share. Dividends may be paid by, mailed check, direct electronic deposit into a bank account, or be reinvested in additional shares of U. S. Steel common stock.

[edit] Facilities

US Steel currently has multiple domestic and international facilities. Of note in the United States is the Clairton Coke Works and the Edgar Thomson Plant, both members of the Mon Valley Works. The Clairton Coke Works is the largest and most environmentally friendly coking facility in North America. The Edgar Thomson Works is one of the oldest steel mills in the world.

US Steel's largest domestic facility is the Gary Works Complex, in Gary, Indiana.

[edit] References

• U.S. Steel's History of U.S. Steel
• Brody, David. Labor in Crisis: The Steel Strike of 1919 (1965)
• Burn, Duncan. The Steel Industry, 1939-1959: A Study in Competition and Planning (1961)
• Misa, Thomas J. A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America, 1865-1925 (1998)
• Scheuerman, William. The Steel Crisis: The Economics and Politics of a Declining Industry (1986)
• Urofsky, Melvin I. Big Steel and the Wilson Administration: A Study in Business-Government Relations (1969)
• Warne, Colston E. ed. The Steel Strike of 1919 (1963) primary and secondary documents
• Warren, Kenneth. Big Steel: The First Century of the United States Steel Corporation, 1901-2001 (2001).

[edit] External links

• U.S. Steel
• United Steelworkers
• Yahoo! — United States Steel Corporation Company Profile
• Documentary Photographs of U.S. Steel from the 1940's and 1950s