Kaiser Mead Set To Fire Up Potlines Despite Strike, Company Says It Has Staff To Run At Full Capacity

After curbing production for four months, Kaiser Aluminum says it will restart the two idled potlines at its Mead smelter.

The company said Tuesday it will begin the intensive, expensive task of starting the two lines it shut down when the United Steelworkers union went on strike Sept. 30.

Kaiser should have both lines running by March, company sources said. The company also is restarting lines it idled in Ghana because a drought there had cut supplies of electricity.

“Although the labor dispute continues, we now have complete confidence in our ability to operate both facilities at full capacity,” said George Haymaker, Kaiser chairman and chief executive officer. The strike has idled 3,000 workers at five plants in the United States.

When the strike was called, the company shut down three potlines - one in Tacoma and two in Spokane - because it feared it couldn’t maintain full production with an inexperienced temporary labor force.

A potline is a string of brick- and carbon-lined containers in which raw materials and electricity combine to create aluminum.

Restarting a single line, which has 141 intensely hot pots or cells, can cost as much as $1.5 million.

The difficulty often comes in trying to stabilize reactions in electrically charged chemical baths in which raw alumina is turned into aluminum.

Since November, workers at Mead have been preparing the idled potlines by jackhammering out the solidified metal and improving the pots and the equipment around them.

“The majority of the manual work is complete,” company spokeswoman Susan Ashe said. By saying they’ll restart the lines “we mean we’re turning the power on.”

That doesn’t mean hiring more people to run the lines. “We can do it with the current work force,” Ashe said.

Mead now employs 835 temporary and salaried workers. When the strike started, that number was 1,440, including 977 union members.

“Even with skilled people, it is a risky process,” said Larry Strom, vice president of the Steelworkers Union local at Mead. “Sometimes when the pots are cold and things are not properly warmed up, it looks like miniature explosions. It’s really kind of violent.”

Kaiser lost about 30 skilled workers on Jan. 14. That’s when it imposed a lockout after rejecting the union’s offer to end the strike and have the workers return under the old contract until a new one could be negotiated.

Under the lockout, Kaiser says by law it couldn’t keep union workers who had crossed the picket line at Mead.

“They lost a big block of experience,” Strom said. None of the temporary workers have been on the potlines longer than four months. He wonders how the company will get the lines running with only a few salaried workers who have done it before.

Strom, an experienced potline worker, remembers his time on the blast crew that restarted Mead’s last idled potlines. He had to wear a full protective blast suit and a face shield. Strom said he and co-workers often had to duck behind aluminum shields to avoid the sparks blasting from the pots.

The company is confident its workers have the appropriate training to start the lines, Ashe said.

Mead’s two idled lines can produce a total of 50,000 metric tons a year of primary aluminum and the eight lines together produce 200,000 metric tons. Kaiser has not yet scheduled restarting Tacoma’s idled potline, which has a 20,000-ton capacity. Tacoma’s other two potlines are operating.

Even though the price of aluminum has dropped 14 percent since September, “the restarted capacity at Mead will make a significant cash-flow contribution to Kaiser during 1999 and beyond,” Haymaker said.

Kaiser’s stock Tuesday closed at $4.88, down 12 cents. A year ago, Kaiser’s stock was trading at about $11 a share.