Mike Doyle: “we have heard a lot of facts today about the steel import crisis, but there is one fact that I would like to stress…”

“we have heard a lot of facts today about the steel import crisis, but there is one fact that I would like to stress above all: 12,000 Americans have lost their jobs to foreign competitors who have cheated. This is not the first steel crisis. I remember the real suffering in the 1970s and the 1980s, in towns like McKeesport, Duquesne, Braddock, Clairton and many other communities in the Mon-Valley section of Pittsburgh. Those were desperate times. I know hard working men and women, who never took a dime from the government, that were forced to go on welfare. I saw good families break up from the stress of not being able to support themselves. Since that time, steel and our steel towns have recovered somewhat. We have done everything we have been asked. Labor productivity has improved tremendously, for one thing. Steel plants in my area have come back with probably one-fourth the number of workers they had, and the large percent of people that were let go many had to find work in the service sector or whatever other under employment jobs they could do, and no one shed a tear for them. Steelworkers did everything they were asked to do because we were told we had to make U.S. steel competitive again. They had to work harder for longer hours, for less pay, and no one came to their aid, but steel came back. They got lean and mean and American steelworkers are now the most efficient producers of steel in the world.”