U.S. Steel

Share of the United States Steel Corporation, issued December 30, 1924

J. P. Morgan formed U.S. Steel on March 2, 1901 (incorporated on February 25),[2] by financing the merger of Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Company with Elbert H. Gary's Federal Steel Company and William Henry "Judge" Moore's National Steel Company[3][4] for $492 million ($16.03 billion today). At one time, U.S. Steel was the largest steel producer and largest corporation in the world. It was capitalized at $1.4 billion ($45.6 billion today),[5] making it the world's first billion-dollar corporation.[6] The company established its headquarters in the Empire Building at 71 Broadway in New York City; it remained a major tenant in the building for 75 years.[7] Charles M. Schwab, the Carnegie Steel executive who originally suggested the merger to Morgan,[8] ultimately emerged as the new corporation's first President.[9]

In 1907 U.S. Steel bought its largest competitor, the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, which was headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Tennessee Coal was replaced in the Dow Jones Industrial Average by the General Electric Company. The federal government attempted to use federal antitrust laws to break up U.S. Steel in 1911 (the same year Standard Oil was broken up), but that effort ultimately failed. In 1902, its first full year of operation, U.S. Steel made 67 percent of all the steel produced in the United States.[5] About 100 years later, as of 2001 it produced only 8 percent more than it did in 1902 and its shipments accounted for only about 8 percent of domestic consumption.[5]

According to the author Douglas Blackmon in Slavery by Another Name,[10] the growth of U.S. Steel and its subsidiaries in the South was partly dependent on the labor of cheaply paid black workers and exploited convicts. The company could obtain black labor at a fraction of the cost of white labor by taking advantage of the Black Codes and discriminatory laws passed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Southern states after the Reconstruction Era. In addition, U.S. Steel had agreements with more than 20 counties in Alabama to obtain the labor of its prisoners, often paying locals nine dollars a month for workers who would be forced into their mines through a system of convict leasing. This practice continued until at least the late 1920s. While some individuals were guilty of a crime they did not receive payment or recognition for their work; many died from abuse, malnutrition, and dire working and living conditions. This practice of convict leasing was fairly ubiquitous as eight Southern states had similar practices and many companies, as well as farmers, took advantage of this.[11][10]

The Corporation, as it was known on Wall Street,[5] was distinguished by its size, rather than for its efficiency or creativity during its heyday. In 1901, it controlled two-thirds of steel production[5] and, through its Pittsburgh Steamship Company, developed the largest commercial fleet on the Great Lakes.[12] 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, run by Charles Schwab, U.S. Steel's former president. U.S. Steel's share of the expanding market slipped to 50 percent by 1911.[5] James A. Farrell was named president in 1911 and served until 1932.

U.S. Steel ranked 16th among United States corporations in the value of World War II production contracts.[13] Production peaked at more than 35  million tons in 1953. Its employment was greatest in 1943, when it had more than 340,000 employees.[5]

The federal government intervened 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 blocked the takeover by ruling that the president did not have the Constitutional authority to seize the mills.[14] President John F. Kennedy was more successful in 1962 when he pressured the steel industry into reversing price increases that Kennedy considered dangerously inflationary.[15]

U.S. Steel strongly resisted Kennedy administration efforts to enlist Alabama businesses to support the desegregation of the University of Alabama, which race-baiting Gov. George Wallace had promised to block by standing in the schoolhouse door. Although the firm employed more than 30,000 workers in Birmingham, Ala., company president Roger M. Blough in 1963 "went out of his way to announce that any attempt to use his company position in Birmingham to pressure local whites was 'repugnant to me personally' and 'repugnant to my fellow officers at U.S. Steel.'"[16]

In the postwar years, the steel industry and heavy manufacturing went through a restructuring that caused a decline in U.S. Steel's need for labor, production, and portfolio. Many jobs moved offshore. By 2000, the company employed 52,500 people.[5]

The U.S. Steel Tower in downtown Pittsburgh

In the early days of the Reagan Administration, steel firms won substantial tax breaks in order to compete with imported goods. But instead of modernizing their mills, steel companies shifted capital out of steel and into more profitable areas. In March 1982, U.S. Steel took its concessions and paid $1.4 billion in cash and $4.7 billion in loans for Marathon Oil, saving approximately $500 million in taxes through the merger. The architect of tax concessions to steel firms, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), complained that "we go out on a limb in Congress and we feel they should be putting it in steel."[17] The events are the subject of "The U.S. Steal Song" [18] by folk singer Anne Feeney.

In 1984 the federal government prevented U.S. Steel from acquiring National Steel, and political pressure from the United States Congress, as well as the United Steelworkers (USW), forced the company to abandon plans to import British Steel Corporation slabs.[5] U.S. Steel finally acquired National Steel's assets in 2003 after National Steel went bankrupt. As part of its diversification plan, U.S. Steel had acquired Marathon Oil on January 7, 1982, as well as Texas Oil and Gas several years later. Recognizing its new scope, it reorganized its holdings as USX Corporation in 1986, with U.S. Steel (renamed USS, Inc.) as a major subsidiary.[19]

About 22,000 USX employees stopped work on August 1, 1986, after the United Steelworkers of America and the company could not agree on new employee contract terms. This was characterized by the company as a strike and by the union as a lockout. This resulted in most USX facilities becoming idle until February 1, 1987, seriously degrading the steel division's market share. A compromise was brokered and accepted by the union membership on January 31, 1987.[20] On February 4, 1987, three days after the agreement had been reached to end the work stoppage, USX announced that four USX plants would remain closed permanently, eliminating about 3,500 union jobs.[20] The closure of so many plants created the term "rust belt" for a region of idle and derelict factories.

Corporate raider Carl Icahn launched a hostile takeover of the steel giant in late 1986 in the midst of the work stoppage. He conducted separate negotiations with the union and with management and proceeded to have proxy battles with shareholders and management. But he abandoned all efforts to buy out the company on January 8, 1987, a few weeks before union employees returned to work.[20]

The U.S. Steel Tower in New York City (now One Liberty Plaza)

At the end of the twentieth century, the corporation was deriving much of its revenue and net income from its energy operations. Led by CEO Thomas Usher, U.S. Steel spun off Marathon and other non-steel assets (except railroad company Transtar) in October 2001. It expanded internationally for the first time by purchasing operations in Slovakia and Serbia.[21]

In the early 2010s, U.S. Steel began investing to upgrade software programs throughout their manufacturing facilities.[22]

In January 2012, U.S. Steel sold its Serbian mills outside Belgrade to the Serbian government, as their operations had been running at an economic loss.[23]

On May 2, 2014, U.S. Steel announced an undisclosed number of layoffs affecting employees worldwide.[24] On July 2, 2014, U.S. Steel was removed from S&P 500 index and placed in the S&P MidCap 400 Index, in light of its declining market capitalization.[25]

U.S. Steel once owned the Northampton and Bath Railroad.[26] The N&B was an 11-kilometer (6.8 mi) short-line railroad built in 1904 that served Atlas Cement in Northampton, Pennsylvania, and Keystone Cement in Bath, Pennsylvania.[27] By 1979 cement shipments had dropped off such that the railroad was no longer economically viable, and U.S. Steel abandoned the line. A 1.5-kilometer (0.93 mi) section of track was retained to serve Atlas Cement. The remainder of the right-of-way was transformed into the Nor-Bath Trail.[28] U.S. Steel also owned the Atlantic City Mine Railroad, whose 76.7-mile (123.4 km) line in Wyoming operated from 1962 until 1983 and served an iron ore mine north of Atlantic City, Wyoming.

Through its Transtar subsidiary, U.S. Steel also owned other railroads that served its mines and mills. Those properties included the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railway in the iron-mining region of northeast Minnesota; the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern that served its Gary Works in northwest Indiana; the Birmingham Southern Railroad serving the U.S. Steel mill in Birmingham, Alabama; and the Bessemer & Lake Erie and Union railroads in western Pennsylvania that delivered iron ore and provided plant-switching services at its mill complex in Braddock, Pennsylvania and coke works in Clairton, Pennsylvania.

U.S. Steel also owned a large Great Lakes commercial freighter fleet, under the Pittsburgh Steamship Company, that transported its raw materials from the Duluth area to Ashtabula, Ohio; Gary, Indiana; and Conneaut, Ohio. The laker fleet, the B&LE, and the DM&IR were acquired by Canadian National after U.S. Steel sold most of Transtar to that company. The ships are leased out to a different, domestic operator because of the United States cabotage law.

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.[29] An original member of the S&P 500 since 1957, U.S. Steel was removed from that index on July 2, 2014, due to declining market capitalization.[25][30]

The Board of Directors considers the declaration of dividends four times each year, with checks for dividends declared on common stock mailed for receipt on 10 March, June, September, and December. In 2008, the dividend was $0.30 per share, the highest in company history, but on April 27, 2009, it was reduced to $0.05 per share.[31] 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.[32]

U.S. Steel maintained the labor policies of Andrew Carnegie, which called for low wages and opposition to unionization. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union that represented workers at the Homestead, Pennsylvania, plant was, for many years, broken 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, and 100 years later it remained the location of the largest integrated steel mill in the Northern Hemisphere. U.S. Steel reached a détente 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 in a 1919 strike defeated union-organizing efforts by William Z. Foster of the AFL.[33]

Heavy pressure from public opinion forced the company to give up its 12-hour day and adopt the standard eight-hour day.[34] 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. These ERPs 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 Congress of Industrial Organizations (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 Auto 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.[35][36]

Still, U.S. Steel worked hand-in-hand with the Birmingham (Alabama) Police Department as it vigorously investigated and targeted labor activities during the 1930s and 1940s. The corporation developed and fed information to a "Red Squad" of detectives "who used the city's vagrancy and criminal-anarchy statutes (liberally reinforced by backroom beatings) to strike at radical labor organizers." In the 1950s, those investigations shifted from labor to civil rights activists.[37]

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 a 116-day strike in 1959, but those strikes were over wages and benefits and not the more fundamental issue of union recognition that led to violent strikes elsewhere.[38][39]

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 if the parties were not able to reach an agreement on any new collective bargaining agreements, thereby preventing disruptive strikes. The ENA failed to stop the decline of the steel industry in the U.S.[40]

U.S. Steel and the other employers terminated the ENA in 1984. In 1986, U.S. Steel employees stopped work after a dispute over contract terms, characterized by the company as a strike and by the union as a lockout. In a letter to striking employees in 1986, Johnston warned, "There are not enough seats in the steel lifeboat for everybody."[41] In addition to reducing the role of unions, the steel industry had sought to induce the federal government to take action to counteract the 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.[42]

During the 1948 Donora smog, an air inversion trapped industrial effluent (air pollution) from the American Steel and Wire plant and U.S. Steel's Donora Zinc Works in Donora, Pennsylvania.[43]

In three days, 20 people died... After the inversion lifted, another 50 died, including Lukasz Musial, the father of baseball great Stan Musial. Hundreds more lived the rest of their lives with damaged lungs and hearts. But another 40 years would pass before the whole truth about Donora's bad air made public-health history.[44]

Today the Donora Smog Museum in that city tells of the influence that the hazardous Donora Smog had on the air quality standards enacted by the federal government in subsequent years.

Researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute have ranked U.S. Steel as the eighth-greatest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States (down from their 2000 ranking as the second-greatest).[45] In 2008, the company released more than one million kg (2.2 million pounds) of toxins, chiefly ammonia, hydrochloric acid, ethylene, zinc compounds, methanol, and benzene, but including manganese, cyanide, and chromium compounds.[46] In 2004, the city of River Rouge, Michigan, and the residents of River Rouge and the nearby city of Ecorse filed a class-action lawsuit against the company for "the release and discharge of air particulate matter...and other toxic and hazardous substances"[47] at its River Rouge plant.[48]

The company has also been implicated in generating water pollution and toxic waste. In 1993, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an order for U.S. Steel to clean up a site on the Delaware River in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, where the soil had been contaminated with arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals, as well as naphthalene. Groundwater at the site was found to be polluted with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and trichloroethylene (TCE).[49] In 2005, the EPA, United States Department of Justice, and the State of Ohio reached a settlement requiring U.S. Steel to pay more than $100,000 in penalties and $294,000 in reparations in answer to allegations that the company illegally released pollutants into Ohio waters.[50] U.S. Steel's Gary, Indiana facility has been repeatedly charged with discharging polluted wastewater into Lake Michigan and the Grand Calumet River. In 1998 the company agreed to payment of a $30 million settlement to clean up contaminated sediments from a five-mile (8 km) stretch of the river.[51]

With the exception of the Fairless Hills and Gary facilities, the lawsuits concern facilities acquired by U.S. Steel via its 2003 purchase of National Steel Corporation, not its historic facilities.

The U.S. Steel Tower in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is named after the company and since 1970, the company's corporate headquarters have been located there. It is the tallest skyscraper in the downtown Pittsburgh skyline, built out of the company's Corten Steel.[52] New York City's One Liberty Plaza was also built by the corporation as that city's U.S. Steel Tower in 1973.[53]

The "Steelmark" logo, originated by U.S. Steel

When the Steelmark logo was created, U.S. Steel attached the following meaning to it: "Steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure and widens your world."[54] The logo was used as part of a major marketing campaign to educate consumers about how important steel is in people's daily lives. The Steelmark logo was used in print, radio and television ads as well as on labels for all steel products, from steel tanks to tricycles to filing cabinets.[55]

In the 1960s, U.S. Steel turned over the Steelmark program to the AISI, where it came to represent the steel industry as a whole. During the 1970s, the logo's meaning was extended to include the three materials used to produce steel: yellow for coal, orange for ore and blue for steel scrap. In the late 1980s, when the AISI founded the Steel Recycling Institute (SRI), the logo took on a new life reminiscent of its 1950s meaning.[56]

The Pittsburgh Steelers professional football team borrowed elements of its logo, a circle containing three hypocycloids, from the Steelmark logo belonging to the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) and created by U.S. Steel. In the 1950s, when helmet logos became popular, the Steelers added players' numbers to either side of their gold helmets. Later that decade, the numbers were removed and in 1962, Cleveland's Republic Steel suggested to the Steelers that they use the Steelmark as a helmet logo.[57]

U.S. Steel financed and constructed the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows-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.[58][59]

The Chicago Picasso sculpture was fabricated by U.S. Steel in Gary, Indiana, before being disassembled and relocated to Chicago.[60] U.S. Steel donated the steel for the construction of St. Michael's Catholic Church in Chicago since 90 percent of the parishioners worked at its mills.[61]

U.S. Steel sponsored The United States Steel Hour television program from 1945 until 1963 on CBS. U.S. Steel built both the Disney's Contemporary Resort[62][63][64] and the Disney's Polynesian Resort in 1971 at Walt Disney World, in part to showcase its residential steel building "modular" products to high-end and luxury consumers.[65]

This same U.S. Steel manufacturing plant that was located on Disney property also helped build the now defunct Court of Flags Resort in Orlando, Florida, on Major Blvd.

U.S. Steel was also involved with Florida real estate development including building beachfront condominiums during the 1970s, such as Sand Key near Daytona Beach, Florida,[66][67][68] and the Pasadena Yacht and Country Club near St. Petersburg, Florida.[69]

• Charles M. Schwab (1901–1903)[84]
• Elbert H. Gary (1903–1911)
• James Augustine Farrell, Sr.– (1911–1932)^{[Note:His obituary says he was president starting in 1911.]}[85]
• William A. Irvin (19 April 1932 – 1 January 1938)[86]
• Benjamin Franklin Fairless (1938–1952)[87]
• Clifford Hood (1952–1959)
• Walter Munford (18 May 1959 – 29 September 1959)[88]
• Leslie B. Worthington (1959–1967)
• Edwin H. Gott (1967–1969)
• Edgar B. Speer (1969–1973)
• David M. Roderick (1973–1979)
• William R. Roesch (1979–1983)
• Charles A. Corry (25 January 1988 – 31 May 1989)
• Thomas J. Usher (1994–1995)
• Paul J. Wilhelm (1994–2001)
• Thomas J. Usher (2001–2003)
• John Surma (2003–2013)
• Mario Longhi— President & CEO of U.S. Steel (September 1, 2013 – May 10, 2017)[89]
• David Burritt— President & CEO (May 10, 2017 – present)[90]

• Elbert Henry Gary (1901–1927)
• J.P. Morgan Jr. (1927–1932)
• Myron C. Taylor (1932–1938)
• Edward Stettinius Jr. (1938–1940)
• Irving Sands Olds (1940–1952)[91][92]
• Benjamin Franklin Fairless— Chairman & CEO of U.S. Steel (1952–1955)
• Roger Blough— Chairman & CEO (3 May 1955 – 31 January 1969)[93]
• Edwin H. Gott— Chairman & CEO (January 31, 1969 – March 1, 1973)[94]
• Edgar B. Speer— Chairman & CEO (March 1, 1973 – April 24, 1979)[95]
• David M. Roderick— Chairman & CEO (April 24, 1979 – May 31, 1989)[96]
• Charles A. Corry— Chairman & CEO (May 31, 1989 – July 1, 1995)[97]
• Thomas Usher— Chairman & CEO (July 1, 1995 – October 1, 2004)[98]
• John Surma— Chairman & CEO (October 1, 2004 – December 31, 2013)[99]
• David S. Sutherland— Non-executive Chairman of the Board (2014—present)