A union-backed effort to expose a local steel fabrication firm has state Sen. Jim Ferlo considering tighter standards for publicly backed contracts.
Since September, the Three Rivers Coalition for Justice and Ironworkers Local 3 have been leafletting the plant and job sites of Rankin-based W&K Steel LLC, and they say they have sought meetings with Urban Redevelopment Authority officials and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. They allege a poor safety record, financial troubles and disparate treatment of refugees — charges the company’s owners vehemently deny.
Mr. Ferlo, D-Highland Park, is a member of the URA board, which backs local building projects, including some that use W&K’s steel. Though he has not done independent research on the company’s performance, he said the concerns of the coalition and union have illuminated a problem in URA-backed contracting.
“I think we want to not only achieve the moral high ground, but we also don’t want people victimized” while doing publicly backed work, he said Friday. “It’s not in the public’s interest to have [subcontractors] or prime [contractors] consistently involved in victimizing workers.”
…Two W&K fabricators, Aung Oo and Timothy Hand, went on strike last year, though they are not represented by a union. They’ve turned their strike into a public relations effort.Mr. Oo, a Burmese refugee, was part of a federal Department of Labor roundtable discussion on Wednesday on Asian-American and Pacific Islander labor problems. Mr. Hand has taken the case to Pittsburgh City Council.
Mr. Hand, 49, of North Huntingdon, said in an interview that he started working at W&K in 2002, and found it “pretty dirty” with “a lot of confusion,” but wasn’t too bothered by the situation until 2006. That’s when the company started bringing in refugees from Burma, after years of bringing in Eastern European and African refugees.
.
“I just saw [the Burmese refugees] being exploited,” he said. “They were getting screamed at every day. They are hard workers. They show up every day.
“Doing the same work, I was almost making double” what the refugees got, he said.
W&K executives said they employ refugees as part of enduring relationships with Jewish Family and Children’s Services and Catholic Charities Diocese of Pittsburgh, which resettles them.
…The coalition points to 26 OSHA violations since 2002, and the 2008 death of an affiliate’s employee, Daniel Seighman, as evidence of unsafe conditions.
The Wilhelms counter that they are in the process of getting their safety program certified through the state. The death, said Mr. Wilhelm, was the result of a worker’s failure to tie off while working at a height. Online OSHA records show a $2,000 fine apparently driven by the death.
Company affiliates have had financial challenges, including a 2007 state tax lien for failure to pay $35,650 in corporate levies. One of its top managers pleaded guilty in 2007 to failure to carry workers’ compensation insurance at HBC Barge LLC, of Brownsville, a related firm.
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
Today the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that Allegany County has declared that a plant in Pittsburgh that employs refugees is essentially a “sweatshop”. The plant “partners” with Catholic Charities Diocese of Pittsburgh and Jewish Family & Children Services of Pittsburgh to employ refugees at wages lower than the industry standard. Local unions also claim that the plant is unsafe. 
Jewish Family and Children’s Services and Catholic Charities Diocese of Pittsburgh’s partnership with W&K Steel LLC is back under the microscope (
