The Steelworkers' South Chicago Community Services Program

The United Steelworkers of America is a voluntary organization that has deep ties in the communities in which its members either work or live, or both. It is vital that such an organization maintains lines of communication, both to members within those communities and to the general public as well. That is one of the reasons for the United Steelworkers' Community Services Program; another is the belief that what is good for the general public and community is good for members and the places they live. Some background history of the United Steelworkers of America how it started and why it does some of the things that will be discussed might be helpful. Anyone who has ever lived in a steelmaking community where the dominant industry is the conversion of coal, limestone, and iron ore into raw steel, knows the process is dirty, grimy, requires a lot of hard manual labor and is a round-the-clock operation. Even in today's modern industrial complex, the working conditions, in many instances, are little better than they were when the first iron was melted and the first steel ingot poured. It is still a hot, grimy back-breaking job. Most of the steelmaking facilities in the United States were originally located in cities and towns where the economic social and political life of the community was dominated by the owners or managers of the vast steelmaking facilities. The owners of the industry frowned, or worse, upon any outside industrial concerns attempting to start operations within the town. Job competition might result in a higher wage scale or better working conditions for workers, which would tend to undermine the almost absolute authority of the steel company owners.published or submitted for publicatio