BUTLER, Pa. – One of the least reported crises in American culture is the collateral damage that people and communities suffer from excessive government regulation. Just one miniature adjustment can start a downward spiral that impacts an entire community’s ability to thrive and grow, keep generations of families intact, or provide students with the tools they need to succeed.
In response, most politicians on both sides of the aisle traditionally do one of two things. They either shrug their shoulders but do nothing, or they call a press conference to point fingers at opposing political parties – and still don’t do much.
For once, elected officials do better. Here, local Democrats and Republicans in Congress joined forces in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, in both Pennsylvania and Ohio (and elsewhere) to stop a Biden Department of Energy rule that would force any company that makes electric distribution transformers to stop using grain-oriented steel cores and amorphous metal is used instead.
Grain-oriented cores are used by only one company in the entire United States, and that is here at Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works. A rule banning the operate of these cores would cost more than 1,500 jobs at Butler and the company’s other facility in Zanesville, Ohio, changing the lives and safety not only of the people who work here, but also thousands of other jobs and miniature businesses that support the plant.
This is an issue not only critical to the men and women working here and in Zanesville; it affects all of us. The distribution transformer is the most critical cog in the U.S. power grid and our energy supply chain.
The replacement that the DOE is pushing for, amorphous steel, is only produced in narrow quantities here. This means that we would have to rely on imports from China, Japan and Vietnam to supply steel for America’s energy needs. The supply chain of America’s already breakable energy grid, and thus national security, could be at risk by being so dependent on imports from the other side of the planet, especially from a hostile power like China.
Unfortunately for affected workers, the issue has received too little media attention to put pressure on decision makers in the White House and the Department of Energy who do not see it as a matter of urgency. But 20 or even 10 years ago, a Democratic administration would have been dancing on scorching coals to fix this.
However, Union leader Jamie Sychak is fighting bravely. The president of UAW Local 3303 sits in his office with his vice president Ray Pflugh, financial secretary Mark Earley and contract chairman Steve Gilliland in a building that once housed the Pullman Standard railcar factory.
“It was a steel mill, known as the wheel mill, that produced steel wheels for railroad cars for Pullman Standard,” Sychak explained, referring to steel production at the same location for more than 150 years.
Like the Cleveland Cliffs Butler Works, the Pullman Standard pumped millions into Butler’s local economy, which paved roads, improved schools, and filled the budgets of local charities. According to historical records compiled by the Butler Historical Society, Pullman Standard produced more than 7 million artillery shells and bombs, as well as railroad cars, for Allied and American forces during World War II. After the war, it employed 4,000 people in its factory and offices; when it closed in 1980, it paralyzed the local economy.
The historical society notes a February 17, 1982 Butler Eagle article in which Mayor Fred Vero estimated the county’s loss at $60 million. School districts lost significant portions of their budgets; suppliers and contractors laid off workers. Approximately 2,000 jobs outside of Pullman Standard were lost due to the plant closure. Unemployment in the county rose to 17.5% virtually overnight. Census data shows that since its closure in 1982, the town of Butler has steadily lost a significant percentage of its local population.
Pullman’s fall had to do with changing American habits. People no longer flocked to passenger trains looking for transportation. They used cars. It’s no different at Butler Works today. People across the country desperately rely on a reliable and affordable power grid. Killing a local power plant would not be an organic side effect of changing habits, but instead a government-made disaster, all in response to pressure from the Sierra Club and other heavily funded and powerful climate justice entities.
Sychak said his team was presented with a draft letter on proposed regulations on efficiency standards for distribution transformers in March last year.
“We brought this letter here, read it and thought, ‘What is this all about?'” he said.
He sent his entire team of union leaders to decipher its effects. “There are seven of us and we spent every waking moment researching it,” Sychak explained.
They were stunned by what they found out. The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and several others sued the Department of Energy for failing to properly conduct its usual six-year review of energy efficiency standards. This lawsuit marked the beginning of collateral damage.
“They fabricated a bogeyman theory that they call the social cost of greenhouse gases, and they put a financial, astronomical financial price on the Department of Energy’s potential liability for failing to do so,” he explained, claiming that the environmental groups’ theory is that the department’s failure to review would result in trillions of dollars in additional costs for the world due to excess greenhouse gases.
“It’s a crazy theory. It has 1240 pages. This is crazy. Yes, and they drag the study out for 30 years to give any value to it,” he said.
Sychak grew up here in Butler. He went to school here, as did his father and his father’s father, and they all worked in the steel mill. The grandfather of ten attributes his existence to the fact that three of his four children live in the area.
His colleague Ray Pflugh also grew up in Butler County and has worked here for 24 years. His two adult sons are the third generation of Pflugh to work here.
As for their colleague Gilliland, he is the third of four generations of his family to have worked here.
Sychak said he met with the White House about the matter, but “we didn’t get anything definitive other than I felt like they really listened to us while we were there.” Still, he had no luck meeting, let alone getting any response from, anyone in Secretary Granholm’s office.
He adds that he takes comfort in the fact that there is a rare moment in American politics when both sides have come together so succinctly to support them and help them overturn this rule. Still, there is uncertainty.
“We have seen this story play out over and over again in America. We have seen the impact it has on communities, churches, schools and families,” Sychak said. “I don’t want to look for a new job at 53.”
