ArcelorMittal may restart company that could employ 250

ArcelorMittal may restart an operation at Indiana Harbor East early next year that could bring about 250 employees from layoff and other areas of the Indiana Harbor site, a union official said.

Tom Hargrove, president of East Chicago-based United Steelworkers Local 1010, said as early as January, the steelmaker will restart operations at the No. 4 bar plant. The local represents about 3,400 employees at Indiana Harbor East.

Hargrove said there could be an opportunity to hire some of the ArcelorMittal probationary employees and USW Local 1011 employees who were laid off earlier this year. Local 1011 represents unionized employees at ArcelorMittal's Indiana Harbor West site.

After getting the appropriate personnel in place, Hargrove said safety training will be key for the people who restart work at the bar plant.

"The steel industry is not dead," Hargrove said. "Any time, you're talking about 250 jobs in this economy, that's good news."

An ArcelorMittal spokeswoman didn't comment directly on the announcement, but said in a statement, "We speak with the USW every day about how to address the current business challenges at all of our facilities."

Citing the global economic downturn and a drop in product demand, ArcelorMittal said April 13 that it planned to lay off about 400 union and nonunion workers in the summer at the Indiana Harbor Long Carbon facility. The closure was completed in July, Hargrove said.

The callback of 250 employees represents two operating shifts, one less than before.

The bar company uses an electric arc furnace, which makes billets from scrap, and a 12-inch bar mill to roll the billets into steel bars.

Christopher Plummer, managing director of Metal Strategies in West Chester, Pa., said most of the bar product produced at Indiana Harbor goes toward automotive industry products. The restart is the result of attempting to capture customers as automotive production recovers.

Plummer said in the United States, Canada and Mexico, light vehicle production was down 38 percent in January through October compared to the same period a year earlier. However, October output was only down 11 percent from a year ago. The improved October result signals a trend that "the auto market is bottoming out and is slowly moving back into a recovery mode," Plummer said.

Next year, Plummer said increases in production should pave the way for continued operation at bar mills around the country. He said light vehicle production in the three countries is expected to be about 11.2 million in 2010, up 33 percent from this year's estimated production level. However, 2010 tally is still more than a million vehicles less than what was produced in 2008.