USW@Work: Winter 2025

Salt of the Earth

Members in Western New York Part of Largest-Producing U.S. Salt Mine

From a control room nestled more than 1,400 feet below ground, Amanda Nahalka monitors the process gallery at the American Rock Salt Co. mine in Mount Morris, N.Y.

With a large television screen and a collection of computer monitors in front of her, Nahalka keeps close track of the salt her fellow members of Local 763 are producing during her shift. A third-generation miner, she is proud to hold the kind of job she had her heart set on since childhood.

“I always wanted to do something with a hard hat,” she said, recalling her admiration for her mother’s career in highway construction. “I’ve done a little bit of everything here.”

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America’s Backbone

Coatesville Steel Mill has Contributed to Nation’s Well-Being Since 1810

The United States was only 34 years old in 1810 when the Brandywine Iron Works and Nail Factory set up shop along its namesake creek in Coatesville, Pa.

That company, later known as Lukens Steel, would go on to help form the backbone of U.S. infrastructure and shipbuilding, contributing to the nation’s first iron-hull sea vessel and producing steel for some of the nation’s most famous structures, including the original World Trade Center and its replacement.

“Our steel is in infrastructure in every major city in this country,” said Fred Grumbine, vice president of Local 1165, which represents workers at the mill, now owned by Cleveland-Cliffs. The mill, about 40 miles west of Philadelphia, also contributed steel to the construction of the Seattle Space Needle, the St. Louis Arch and countless other notable projects.

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Saving Maxo Vanka

USW Members Help Restore Historic Murals in Pittsburgh

Maxo Vanka, born Maximilian Vanka in 1889, immigrated to America from Croatia in the early 20th century due to the growing fascist threat to his Jewish family. During Vanka’s first visit to Pittsburgh in 1935, he fell in love with the steel town and made a fortuitous friendship with Father Albert Zagar of the St. Nicholas Croatian Church in the city’s Millvale neighborhood.

Zagar longed for color on his church’s plain walls, but he didn’t want the usual imagery found in most religious houses. He knew Vanka was the perfect artist for the job.

“I painted so that Divinity, in becoming human, would make humanity divine,” Vanka once said. And that’s exactly what he did with his 25 individual murals that cover the full interior of the church.

Vanka maximized his opportunity to pay tribute to faith while expressing his passionate beliefs about social justice, the horrors of war, and the need to help celebrate an immigrant population. In 1937 and 1941, he adorned the walls that make up what is often called America’s Sistine Chapel with striking images of a mother sacrificing her deceased son to industry, an angel wearing a gas mask, and Mary fighting on the battlefield.

Decades later, artists and activists, including members of the United Steelworkers, have completed the painstaking yet incredibly vital work of restoring these murals to their original glory, as well as raising awareness about the project and preserving its legacy.

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Oil Workers Set Ambitious Agenda

Members Agree on Bargaining Goals for 2026 Contract Talks

The USW’s master contract with the oil and petrochemical industry doesn’t expire until January 2026, but members are already working together to prepare for the upcoming negotiations.

About 275 members at the National Oil Bargaining Program (NOBP) Conference last fall in Pittsburgh selected the union’s policy committee and set an ambitious agenda for the committee’s upcoming talks on a new agreement.

“As we prepare for the next round of bargaining, it’s essential that we have open lines of communication, not just in the final months but starting right now,” said NOBP Chair Mike Smith. “That’s why it’s so important that we build power at conferences like this, and why we work so hard to strengthen safety and health regulations in the states where our members work.”

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40 Years of SOAR

USW Retiree Organization Has Evolved Into a Legion of Activists

On March 28, 1980, Frank Lumpkin showed up at Wisconsin Steel Works on the south side of Chicago, where he’d worked for 30 years, to find that the gates were locked with no explanation. They never reopened.

What followed was a years-long fight for the pensions, pay and benefits the company owed to more than 3,200 workers. Lumpkin and his wife, Bea, organized workers, families and community residents into the “Save our Jobs Committee.” With help from USW members and other workers in the region, along with many more across the country, the group ultimately won $17.7 million in court settlements.

“We put up a big fight and the union, the USW, took us in,” said Bea Lumpkin, whose husband died in 2010. “In turn, the unemployed Wisconsin Steelworkers became the best union supporters.”

The Lumpkins’ story was one of many similar struggles that played out across the country that helped to pave the way for the creation of Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), a group that USW leaders founded 40 years ago, during the depths of the steel industry crisis in the United States.

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