McDonald Steel winds down production

Aug 8, 2023

McDONALD — McDonald Steel is wrapping up final orders at Ohio Avenue with its customers.

The mill likely will operate through the end of October and possibly into November, the company said in a statement.

The warehouse will continue to post process and ship likely through the end of the first quarter of 2024, McDonald Steel said in an email.

“Effects bargaining with the union representing its employees concluded in an agreement last week. Terms of the agreement are not public,” it noted.

Effects bargaining is a type of bargaining that involves certain decisions that are within the management’s right to make. This is common to some business decisions such as laying off and transferring employees.

“Employees are free to apply for work at the Cleveland facility if they choose to do so. No announcements regarding the disposition of or future operations at the McDonald Steel facility are available at this time,” according to the email.

The company announced June 27 it will cease operating its 14-inch hot rolled steel rolling mill by the end of the third quarter, and it will exit the special shapes business toward the end of 2023. The third quarter ends Sept. 30.

United Steel Workers Local 1307, with Teamsters Local 377, jointly represent the facility’s union workers. The Cleveland facility is non-union.

Mark Murray, United Steel Workers staff representative, said Monday the union leaders were able to secure for the workers a shutdown payout — despite the reality of losing their jobs.

As for what’s next for the workers, Murray said, “Currently the market is an employee one with a lot of people hiring. So we’re directing them to our facilities that are hiring and will allow them to work there.”

The mill produces multiple steel shapes, from expansion joints and decking for bridges to parts used for tracks and on railroad cars in the railroad industry.

The company had stated earlier: “While McDonald Steel has invested more than $26.1 million in capital improvements and $12 million in routine maintenance and repairs and has paid more than $200 million in wages over the past 40 years since the steel mill reopened in 1981, the 100-year-old facility would require an untenable additional investment to operate efficiently and reliably while only serving a limited market.

About 80 employees will be affected.

McDonald Steel Corp. was founded in 1981 by a group of local investors who saw opportunity in the recently shuttered McDonald Works of U.S. Steel.

Over the past 42 years, the management and employees of McDonald Steel have expanded its product offerings to more than 500 symmetrical and asymmetrical hot-rolled shapes. The shapes are used in the production of bridge decking and expansion joints, wheels for on- and off-road applications, automotive door hinges, spigot sections and a number of applications in the rail and rail car industry, according to its website.

In October 2022, McDonald Steel announced a subsidiary, Mac Steel GSC Inc., acquired the assets of Cleveland-based General Steel Corp., a steel service center specializing in the processing of steel plate.

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