Steelworkers Put Pressure On Kaiser

The United Steelworkers of America want job security in Spokane.

So they’re trying to pressure Kaiser Aluminum Corp. into spending its windfall from aluminum smelter sales of electricity on new power generation.

This, the reasoning goes, will provide the company with at least some of its own electricity and further strengthen the Mead smelter’s ability to stay in business.

In a telephone press conference Thursday, union officials urged Kaiser to put the earnings toward projects, not the bottom line.

About 545 Steelworkers have been laid off during the past month as the company takes advantage of the soaring price of electricity.

Three weeks’ worth of December electricity netted the company $52 million. Its 191 megawatts of January power were sold for another $37 million, according to Kaiser.

Having the Mead smelter serve as a power marketer is earning the company millions more than its primary business of making metal.

In fact, the company is making enough money on power sales to fully pay a nonworking work force.

At the same time, there’s a growing supply and demand gap for electricity in the western United States.

Casting a cautious glance to the future, Steelworkers are nervous that when Kaiser’s contractual right to resell its Bonneville Power Administration electricity ends next September, it won’t reopen the smelter.

David Foster, a district union director for the Northwest, said Kaiser now needs to work on keeping the aluminum smelter operating by investing in its own electricity-making capability.

Kaiser has said power generation is a complex question with too many variables for a quick decision.

Company officials have expressed an interest in the idea, but haven’t made a proposal. Officials couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.

Other companies profiting from the sale of BPA power, however, have made announcements, said BPA spokesman Ed Mosey.

“It’s the kind of thing we like to see these companies do,” he said.

Golden Northwest Aluminum, with smelters in Goldendale, Wash., and The Dalles, Ore., has proposed building a 250-megawatt gas-fired power plant.

And so has Columbia Falls Aluminum Co., in Montana.

“Each company has a little different spin, but they all come down to having BPA purchase the power for regional uses, which we need right now,” Mosey said.

Kaiser, he said, hasn’t forwarded such plans to BPA.

Foster said that’s why the Steelworkers are raising the issue.

Full pay for laid-off workers is a start, he said. Now, the union will continue to push the federal government and Kaiser toward a new power generation understanding.

He added: “We also think it provides an opportunity that with the right kind of public/private partnership … eventually we wind up with a system that better serves industry and ratepayers.”