AK Steel has been running newspaper ads in the Ohio area to recruit experienced workers to temporarily replace its locked out Middletown workers.
Ads were run in local newspapers in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, Toledo, and in West Virginia's northern panhandle, advertising jobs for millwrights, electricians,
pipe fitters, welders, and others to work as temporary staff at Middletown.
According to the Independent Steelworkers Union, who represents laid off Mittal workers in Weirton, Ohio, over a hundred former Weirton workers were contacted at their homes by a hiring agency working for AK Steel.
The Independent Steelworkers Union did not appreciate this move, to say the least.
"We don't know how this hiring company obtained the names and the phone numbers of our union members," Independent Steelworkers president Mark Glyptis said in a public statement. "But we have not and will not encourage any of our union members to act as scabs for AK Steel."
AK representatives met again this week with with the Armco Employees Independent Federation (AEIF), who have been locked out since February 28. They did not, however, discuss contract negotiations -- they discussed profit sharing, though no agreement was reached.
The company has not granted any profit-sharing benefits to Middletown workers, though they did distribute profit-sharing checks of $1'400 per employee to workers at its Ashland, Kentucky plant Monday.
No further negotiation sessions between AK and the AEIF have been scheduled.
Neither AK Steel or the AEIF could be reached for comment.