Interview with Bruce Ward for Beyond Steel

Interview with Bruce Ward for Beyond Steel: An Archive of Lehigh Valley Industry and Culture.

INTERVIEWER: All right? This is the life history interview of Bruce

Ward. It’s November 16th, 2005. It’s four-forty in the afternoon,

and the interviewers are David Webster and Stephan Sawicki. So

we’ll go ahead and start it right now. Bruce, when and where were

you born?

BRUCE WARD: I was born in Bethlehem in July 3rd, 1949.

IN: And can you describe the neighborhood you grew up in?

BW: I grew up on Wood Street in Bethlehem, right between Northeast

Junior High School and Liberty High School, about, oh, three

blocks from the YMCA.

IN: Can you tell me a little bit about your family, number of siblings,

your father and your mother’s occupation?

BW: I have a brother Dennis, who is two and a half years older than me.

My mother and father—my father—that’s too loud, isn’t it? Okay,

I’ll start over with that last question.

IN: Sure, that’s fine. Can you tell me a little bit about your family, the

number of siblings, your father’s occupation, and your mother’s

occupation?

BW: Okay, I have a brother Dennis, who is about two and half years

older than me. My father worked for Banko Beverage Company in

Bethlehem, later in Allentown. My mother worked various

restaurants as a waitress in Bethlehem. And she passed away when

I was thirteen. My father remarried when I was sixteen, and my

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step-mother also was a waitress, and she worked various places in

Bethlehem, and also worked at the steel in the executive cafeteria.

IN: Where did you attend school, grade school and high school?

BW: I went to Lafayette Elementary School in Bethlehem, which is now

demolished. It’s a vacant lot right now. I went to Northeast

Middle School, and Liberty High School, in Bethlehem. I

graduated in 1967.

IN: Did you know what you wanted to do after you graduated, or left

school?

BW: After I left school I had not a clue what I was going to do. I went

to community college for nearly two years, and I went for

accounting. And accounting was a little bit too dry for me. And so

I left school, and did, oh, I don’t know, any number of jobs, in

town, before I went to the steel. I was twenty-four in 1973. I was

married and living in Fountain Hill. And I originally did not want

to go to work at the steel, but at that age I had a family, a wife, and

was thinking about raising a family, so I went to the steel

company!

IN: What was the attitude of your family, or community and the peers,

towards Bethlehem Steel at the time?

BW: Well, at that time, in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies, if you

worked at the steel, you had a job for life. Good jobs. They were

well-paid jobs. You were held in high esteem in the community

because you worked at the steel.

IN: Bruce, were there any other reasons why you decided to work at

the steel, other than those you just listed?

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BW: Well, I had been at a lot of different jobs, and they were usually

low-paying jobs, and I was looking for a little bit more

permanency, a job where I wouldn’t be laid off, a job where I

made a little more money, and that’s what the steel provided.

IN: So what was your job title at the steel, and what did that entail on a

day to day basis?

BW: Well, when I started at the steel in 1973, the employment person

asked me what jobs I was interested in, and they had several

openings available. They had a job in the boiler house, where I

would be shoveling ashes out of the boilers. They had a job at

ingot mold, where I would be shoveling sand out of the mold pits.

And they had a job in the beam yards, where I would be outside.

And I thought, “It’s spring! May of 1973, I think I’d like to be

outside.” So I took the job in the beam yards. And the fellow told

me jokingly that it never rained in the beam yards. But what he

meant was: it didn’t matter if it was raining or not, you’re working

outside.

IN: What was your first day like on the job?

BW: Well, the first day was an orientation day. They’d get you your

safety shoes. They’d give you a helmet. They’d give you safety

glasses, or they’d have prescription glasses, or they’d have goggles

that fit over your regular glasses. And they’d take you through that

particular department, and they show you the hazards, and what to

watch out for. So when I got oriented, it was very loud, it was very

hot, it was very big.

The scope of everything was huge! I had lived in town all

my life and had only heard the steel, and heard of jobs at the steel.

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A friend of mine was a machinist; another friend worked in the

boiler house. Another friend worked in central tool. When I

started in the beam yards, it was a whole new world. It was this

huge, huge facility with these overhead cranes, moving these I-

beams all over the place. And there were roller lines and beams

coming out of the middle, and some of them were glowing red, and

some of them were just moving along. And it was this loud,

obnoxious noise, and these sirens going, and these whistles

blowing. Actually, it was pretty scary!

IN: And from there, what other jobs did you end up holding at the

steel?

BW: Well, I stayed in the beam yards for nearly two years. I got laid off

in 1975, and I took a job in the rolling mills, which is where the

beams came from. And I had never seen that before; I only saw

the edge of the rolling mill where the beams came out. And so I

went further into the bowels, the guts of the steel company, so to

speak. And I learned how the actual ingots turn into beams. I saw

how they roll the beams, how they cut the beams, how they weigh

the beams, and measure them, and gauge them. So it was also an

educational experience.

I worked in the rolling mills for probably six months, and it

was a dirty job. I was a laborer, a scale man. The only things I did

were empty the scale pits, and on shut-down days you shovel

scales. So I went back to shoveling again. In the beam yards I had

a job that commanded a little more respect: I was a slip maker for

the beam marker. I would measure the beams, and write down on

the beam what the weight of the beam is, how long it is, what its

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chemical composition was, what customer it’s going to. And that

was a pretty good job, but I didn’t have enough time or seniority to

hold that job. So when the layoffs came, I went into the rolling

mills.

I got laid off in the rolling mills, but before I got laid off, I

signed up for a posting to become a rigger. I didn’t know what a

rigger was, but there was an apprenticeship available. And I

signed up to become a rigger, and then I went to the rigger

department.

IN: And of those three jobs, which one was your favorite, would you

say? Did you really enjoy the rigger position?

BW: Well, the rigger position was by far the most difficult, and the most

challenging. It had a four-year apprenticeship attached to it. I was

a rigger apprentice, and then I became a C rigger when I got out of

the apprenticeship. And then I became a B rigger, or a burner.

And that job was good, because I didn’t get laid off very often.

The job was interesting, because I went all over the plant. And of

course, I was outside in the weather most of the time. It seemed

that you always got outside when the weather was lousy, and

inside when the weather was nice.

But it was—I guess you would say it was plant maintenance

on a large scale, and the rigger department was very unique. It

was—all kinds of people in that department, and we did the most

demanding and dangerous work in the plant, along with pipe

fitters, carpenters, millwrights, and other craft people. So it was a

crafted position. You had a degree of responsibility that you don’t

get in some of the production departments, responsibility for

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yourself and for your fellow worker, because it’s a dangerous job,

doing these heavy lifts, and big alterations, and demolition and

construction projects.

IN: In terms of the whole steel-making process, what were the roles of

the riggers in terms of facilitating the steel-making?

BW: Well, riggers didn’t have anything to do with making steel. A lot

of the crafts or trades did not have anything to do with making

steel--it was the maintenance of the facility. If the blast furnace

went down, if there was something wrong with it, if a hole got

burnt into the blast furnace with a BOF, we would get called in to

fix it. If one of the skip tubs fell off the track, and they couldn’t

charge the furnace with metal and the materials, we would fix it.

So I guess our job would be to make sure that the steel company

kept running.

IN: In terms of your experience on the job, I mean, how did breaks and

lunches work, for instance?

BW: Well, in my department, it was not a production department; it was

considered overhead, which means that they have to show

something for every hour you were there. So they would always

make sure that you had something to do. In a production

department, you might not have to work your whole eight hours,

because the mill was rolling. So if you are something that is—if

you are pushing levers to make these beams go down the mill, then

you’re working as long as the mill is working. If you are a

maintenance person in the mill, then when the mill is working,

you’re not working, so maybe you’re getting rolls ready for the

next roll change.

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But in the rigger department, you’re always working. And

the foreman is always making sure that you have ten minutes for

break in the morning, and twenty minutes at noon time. So, if you

were up on a job up on the blast furnace, you got to come down off

the blast furnace for ten minutes, grab a cup of coffee, and a bite to

eat. But when those ten minutes were up, you were back on the

job. Same thing at lunch time. You had twenty minutes to eat

your lunch. You got called down off the furnace at twelve o’clock,

and at twenty after twelve, you were told to go back up on the

furnace and do whatever it is you’re doing.

And the reason being is: the facility that you were working

at was usually down, or usually not working. So you needed to be

working to make sure that facility is going to go back online in a

timely manner. Very often, if there was a breakdown, we would

have to spell each other for breaks, because they needed the people

on the job all the time, to get the work done.

IN: So in a sense, there were sort of different shifts for the riggers,

even when it came to breaks and lunch, and things like that.

BW: Very often you might not get your lunch, or your first break or

your second break right at everybody’s break time. You might

have to go at twelve-thirty instead of twelve o’clock. You might

have to go at ten o’clock instead of nine-thirty, yeah. And also, we

went round the clock. We went middle shift, night shift, and the

shifts sometimes overlapped. You might work eleven to eight.

Day shift would come in seven to four. Middle shift would come

in three to twelve, so that there was an overlap, so that while the

other guys were getting to the job, getting lined up on what they

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were going to be doing, that somebody’s also already, or still,

working on it, until they come to take their place.

A lot of the production departments worked that way, so that

production would not slow down or shut down at all, so that they

would always have somebody working, so that the place was

always going, so that production was always being made. When

there’s no production, there’s no money. So, you had to always be

mindful of that, and the company was very mindful of that.

IN: Did you ever find yourself on call, sometimes, when you were

home, and you’d have to come in and handle a problem

specifically?

BW: Yeah, that happened pretty often. I tried not to answer the phone

at those times. I tried not to be available, but sometimes they get

you. And if you got called in for an extra shift, it was good,

because it was time and a half, and very often, you’d want to do it.

Of course, there were times when there was so much overtime, you

had to refuse it, because you get tired, and you need a break, and

you need to get away from that, that kind of stress.

IN: Bruce, can you talk a little bit about the different shops that were at

Bethlehem Steel, and what shop you were in?

BW: The different shops: there were so many shops at the steel. There

were hot metal shops. There were machine shops. There were

shops that made bearings, for instance. There were shops that

made castings; there were shops that made molds for castings.

There was the railroad shop. There was, well, the rolling mills.

There was the hand-rolling mill. There was the drop forge. There

was just all these different facilities—a shop that just took the saw

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blades that cut steel, both cold and hot steel, where they took the

saw blades and renewed them, or remanufactured them, so that

they would always have saw blades to cut steel. There were shops

that, all they made were things that were welded. There were

shops that made machine parts. There were shops that made gears.

There were shops that made wood things, and wood molds, and

wood for offices, or wood for packing things to be shipped.

My particular shop was a maintenance shop, a service

division shop, and there were several of those. They included all

the crafts and trades. They included the carpenters, the pipe fitters,

the millwrights, the electricians, the laborers, the bricklayers, the

riggers, the field millwrights, and the shop millwrights. That was

the service division, and I was part of the service division.

IN: Ands when it came to your job, how were you trained for your

position?

BW: I went through a four-year apprenticeship where one day every two

weeks we would be in class, and we would be doing an

international correspondence school program that had to do with

print reading, T-square use, slide rule use, math, geometry,

metallurgy. The field training was the actual cutting and burning,

welding, fitting. You got into the different shops and worked as a

welder. You worked alongside the electricians, or the bricklayers,

or the carpenters.

What they did was they trained you in all of the things that

would have to do with repairing the facility. I spent two months in

welding school. I spent two weeks in burning school. I spent

weeks with the labor gang, weeks with the bricklayers. They

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wanted you to be well-rounded, and well-versed in the things that

you had to do concerning rigging, making heavy lifts, and working

with the other crafts and trades. I learned how to drive a forklift. I

learned how to run an overhead crane. I learned how to rig up a

three-two block [unclear]. I learned how to hook up heavy lifts,

how to distribute weight, how to estimate weights on big things. It

was a pretty well-rounded program. The training was really

safety-oriented, and job-oriented.

IN: And what safety precautions did your job require you to take?

BW: Every day, you had to be totally aware of everything you did, from

walking through a shop, to anything your job entailed. And you

were reminded of that daily by the people that you worked with, by

your foreman, then your supervisor, your superintendent. They

had safety meetings on a regular basis, at least once a week.

Towards the end, we had safety meetings and line-up meetings

every day. It was a very dangerous place. You could get hurt just

walking through a shop, if you were not careful. So safety was

foremost on everybody’s mind, because the results, if you weren’t

safe, could be just disastrous, in just a moment.

IN: Were there any specific dangers that your shop might have had, or

your job might have had, that other shops didn’t have to worry

about?

BW: Yeah, I would say that some of the dangers that my position had,

as opposed to some of the production shops—we had to be very

careful about falls from heights. We had to be very careful about

electronic and electric feed rails that operated the heavy

equipment. We worked in close proximity to those. We had to be

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very careful of heavy lifts, both on the ground and when you’re up

in the air receiving that heavy lift. We had to be very careful of

cranes and overhead lifting devices. If one were to not operate

them properly, you could be pinched or squished.

The weather had a lot to do with safety. If you were up on a

crane run that was exposed to the weather, you had to make sure

that what you were walking on was wet instead of icy. And even if

it was wet, you had to make sure that you had good footing. You

had to make sure that wherever you went to work was a safe site,

meaning that there was no gas present that could overcome you,

that there was no unseen hazards that you didn’t know about, that

everybody that was working in that vicinity knew specifically

where you were, and what you were doing.

You had to make sure that your leader or your foreman

knew where you were at all times. If you were supposed to be on a

job, you were expected to be there. If you weren’t there and

something happened, nobody would know about it. If you went

someplace where a hazard existed and you didn’t tell anybody, and

you were overcome with gas, nobody would know about it. If you

fell into a hole, nobody would know about it.

So it was very much a buddy system. You had to have a

buddy know where you were all the time. You had to tell your

leader, your foreman, the people you were working with, where

you were. If you needed to go for a part, you had to tell somebody.

So everything was very safety-oriented, and everybody was really

safety conscious.

IN: How well do you think the safety programs worked for your job?

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BW: I think the safety programs worked very well from my position.

I’m still here. I did not experience any major accidents. I had a

few minor accidents: cuts, scrapes, bruises, trips, dirt in the eye,

bumping things. You had to be very careful because the raw steel,

where the raw steel was made, it could be hot, and you wouldn’t

know it. It could have rough edges; if you brushed against it, you

could be cut. They made you aware of every safety item that they

were aware of, and they tried to make you aware of the ones that

maybe people weren’t aware of, like gas. Gas is odorless,

colorless, tasteless. You could be overcome in two breaths. They

had gas checkers; they had a department that checked for gas.

They had machines that checked for gas. If you went into a

department, you had to make sure that the supervision in that

department knew that you were going there, because of the hazards

that existed in that department. So, I would say that the safety

controls that they had worked very well.

IN: Did you find that you had more or less injuries than other jobs?

BW: Well, I would say that the rigger’s job was totally by far one of the

most dangerous in the plant. One time I went for independent

insurance, and they told me that the rate of insurance that I would

have to buy was the same as if I were a race car driver, because the

hazards were that great. We had probably less accidents per man-

hours than most of the other departments in the service division,

not to say that they were any less dangerous. But I think we were

more safety conscious.

One thing about the riggers was we, I believe, were one of

the tightest-knit departments in the steel, and there were tight-knit

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departments. We played a lot of them in softball, and did other

activities with them. You had to pretty much depend on the fellow

working next to you, to help you be aware, and he very often was

depending on you. I remember specifically a fellow needed to lean

out of a building, and before he did so, he said, “Grab my belt and

hang on.” Just in case he lost his footing or lost his balance and

lunged forward, he had somebody holding onto him. You don’t

get that in every job; they don’t get that in a lot of production

departments. You do get that in a close-knit group that does high

risk jobs like heavy industrial maintenance.

IN: Were your health services free?

BW: We had a very comprehensive health care insurance. And they had

a dispensary, that if you needed any kind of care while you were in

the plant, you could go there. I remember going there for sunburn.

On vacation, I got home—I got sunburned! I went to the

dispensary, and they gave you cream. They pretty much took care

of any kind of health issues that we had, yes.

IN: Was there any special equipment that you needed for your job?

BW: Do you mean safety equipment, or--?

IN: Safety equipment and general equipment.

BW: Safety equipment and tools? Yeah. In my department, you needed

safety belts and rope, which you see hanging in the corner there.

That’s my tool bag. You needed a hammer. You needed a T-

square. You needed a chisel. You needed a respirator, you needed

ear protection, you needed a helmet, you needed glasses, you

needed safety shoes with metatarsals.

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You needed fireproof or fire-retardant clothing. So you

couldn’t wear old tattered clothes. You had to wear stuff that

wasn’t ripped, because old, tattered cotton is extremely flammable.

So you had to have stuff that was intact, because if it wasn’t, and

you were burning, and your pants start on fire, you wouldn’t know

if until half your pant leg was gone. Unless there was somebody

watching you, which there was!

So, let’s see—other safety equipment? I guess that’s about

it. Oh, gas masks. We were gas trained. And then if we were

doing a job that had to do with grinding, fitting, very often they

had shields. Welding hoods—they had welding hoods. They had

air movers. That’s about it, I think.

IN: What equipment or tools, safety equipment, that sort of thing, was

provided? And what of it did you have to buy yourself?

BW: Let’s see. In the beginning, we bought our own safety shoes.

Prescription glasses they provided, they paid for. Later on, they

bought you safety shoes; that was part of the union contract. They

provided some of the tools. If you wanted a T-square, or a bevel

square, or your own chisel, or your own personal tools, you had to

buy those.

IN: Bruce, did you have a nickname at the steel?

BW: Yes, I did! My nickname was Shakespeare.

IN: And how’d you get that?

BW: I got the nickname Shakespeare because I was involved in

theatrical productions, and all of the fellows knew that I was in the

local community theater plays. And the general foreman found

out, and he started calling me Shakespeare.

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IN: And as far as being a rigger, were there any nicknames for your

job?

BW: Well, there was a derogatory term that was used quite often. There

were also adjectives that were used in front the name rigger. Let’s

see. I think it was with an air of jealousy, or maybe—I’m not sure

what. You know, you’d come into a department, and everybody

says, “Oh, hide all your tools. The riggers are here,” you know. I

don’t know how that attitude happened, why they thought we

would steal their things. I guess it was because we got all over the

plant, and had the opportunity. And some of the riggers were very

opportunistic. Perhaps that’s how we got our reputation. And we

also had a reputation for being able to do the toughest jobs, and go

places where other people might not.

IN: Did you feel that at your job at Bethlehem Steel you were well

compensated?

BW: Well, I hate to think that I—well, let me see. Let me start that

over. Do I think I was well compensated? Yeah, I think that I was

pretty well compensated. I think, though, that when you look at

how dangerous the job was, you could have always had a little bit

more. Production departments I think earned more incentive than

we did in the service division, and I think our job was a far bit

more dangerous than a lot of the production departments.

So I would say we should have had more. We should have

earned more money, because our job was more dangerous. I mean,

something could have dropped out of the air. Somebody could

have dropped something on you. You could have fallen. You

could have been electrocuted. You could have been crushed or

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pinned or crunched quite easily, or burned. And I don’t think that

there is a dollar amount that you can put on that. You know, you

can always look for more, and you might not get it, but that’s what

it was.

IN: And how did you feel your compensation rated, versus, say, your

family or friends who didn’t work at the steel?

BW: By far, jobs at the steel paid better, in some cases much better, than

the same type of job outside of the steel. So, yeah, the

compensation was pretty good.

IN: How did new technology change your job?

BW: Well, let’s see. New technology changing the job? The older

fellows seemed to say, “Oh, we never had crane cars before,”

Pettibone crane cars--you see them with their lifting shafts sticking

up in the air, and they expand, and they can be positioned

anywhere. They were pretty good, because if you didn’t have

those, we would have to rig up something on the steelwork or

superstructure itself, and make that lift. So when the crane cars

came about, and lifting devices came about, it was probably much

better, because you didn’t have to build anything off the

superstructure.

But a lot of the techniques and things that we used—the

jacks got better with time. They had hydraulic jacks that were

powered by compressors. In the earlier days, they had jacks that

you had to jack! It was a hundred ton jack, and you would jack all

day, and you would only get that sucker to move two or three

inches, you know? We had chain block and falls, and you would

pull all day, and you would get something to lift up maybe three or

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four feet. There were places where you couldn’t use a crane car,

so you had to use the old methodology. You would very often

have to rig up a block and fall, and a lot of people don’t even know

what a block and fall is anymore. So, technology did help in some

instances, but in other areas, no, you did it the same old way it was

done a hundred years ago.

IN: Now even with this new technology, would you say that it might

have even added more to your job, in terms of maintenance for,

like, for instance the crane car? Would you have to perform

maintenance on that as well?

BW: I would say that the new technology helped, that I don’t think that

there was more maintenance that we would have to do. We always

took care of our equipment, because you needed that equipment to

get the jobs done. You took care of your block and falls; you took

care of your chain hoist. You took care of your chain ratchets and

what not. And the crane cars—they were taken car of by another

department. They were taken care of by the trucking department.

They had people—that’s all they did. They operated the crane car,

and it was their job to make sure that the maintenance was up to

date on it. So that was somebody else’s worry; that wasn’t our

worry.

We definitely took care of our own tools, pretty much, and

made sure that we had working tools when we went out on a job,

because there’s nothing worse than walking up to the top of the

blast furnace with a block and fall, or a chain ratchet, or a chain

hoist, or an air hoist, and it didn’t work. You don’t want to make

that trip too many times a day, carrying something that’s very

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heavy, when you get it up there and know that it doesn’t work.

You checked it out before you went out on the job to make sure it

worked. So yeah, we took care of our tools.

IN: If you could go back, were there any jobs that you would have

wanted to have, other than being a rigger?

BW: If I could go back, I think I would have liked to have worked up in

research, and had a desk, and maybe perhaps documented some of

the things that were going to come into the steel industry. I think

the nature of the work was such that I’m feeling physically—I

don’t want to say disabled—but physically pressed now, because

of working outside, and doing the heavy lifting, and you know,

having that much stress on your body for that many years. It’s

hard on you, and you get old very quickly, if you’re outside all the

time, and if you’re lifting all the time, if you’re bending all the

time, and straining and pulling. It’s okay when you’re young, but

when you get older, it plays on you.

And I think that it would have been nice to have a job where

you just document something, have a desk and write something

down, and check something, and have the machine do all your

work for you. Yeah, I would have liked that better, I think. I

mean, towards the end I did get a position where I was a building

inspector. But I still would have to go up to the top of the machine

shop, and walk the crane run, and make sure that there were no

clips that were falling off the rail, or that the rail was secure, and

that equipment was satisfactorily maintained. So that was a better

job, but it would have been nice to have a little office somewhere,

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where not a lot of people knew where you were, you know, so you

could just take it easy. That didn’t happen to me, though! [Laughs]

IN: Now were there any jobs that you would have never wanted, at all?

BW: Oh, yeah! The foundries were the worst places to work, I think.

The air in the foundry was so thick you couldn’t see. They had to

have lights on all the time, and you could see the dirt in the air.

They were really dirty. The blast furnace was always, always hot.

The foundries were always dirty. The coal handling was always

dirty. The coke works always stank.

You know, when I look back, the beam yards was one of the

nicer places where I did work. It was more clean. You were

outside, and you didn’t get all the smells and odors that you did

from the mills and the foundries, and what not.

IN: Now, you were speaking a lot about sort of the camaraderie that

you had with a lot of the guys, being the rigger, you know, you’re

watching over each other, and things like that. Could you describe

a little bit of that in a little bit more detail? Are you still friends

with a lot of the guys that you were riggers with? How is that

going over the years?

BW: Well, you know, you go fishing with these guys, you go hunting.

You go bowling, or played softball, or just go to the club, you

know, go to the gathering around the holidays. And we certainly

don’t see each other as much as we used to. I think that the great

thing about the rigger department is I could probably, even now,

call up a couple of them if I needed something, and I know that if

there was any way they could, they would come and help me. I

think that’s a great thing, and you don’t lose that. And I would like

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to feel that these could also call me, and I know that I would be

there for them as well.

It’s almost like being in the service, you know. If you’re in

the Marines, you’re always a Jarhead, you know? You’re

always—it’s Semper Fi, no matter what age or what other

circumstances you’ve gone through. Your biggest day is the

Marine Corps’s birthday, you know? It’s almost like that, working

in the service division, and working with the riggers.

IN: Now what do you want people to know about your job, that people

don’t often ask you about?

BW: What do I want people to know about my job? I think I would

want people to know that my job was as important as one at the

production shops that actually made the steel, that they could not

have kept the steel going as long as they did without guys like me.

That that steel company was my steel company, too, and you

know, we—if a basic oxygen furnace got a hole in it, we were

there until it was fixed. A blast furnace exploded and we lost heat

in it, we were there until it was operational again. These big jobs,

even building a blast furnace—almost nobody does that anymore.

I think that type of work is probably going to be lost. There are

very few big engineering companies that will even tackle a job like

that. I’d like to think that what I did was important. I mean, it was

important to me at the time. I had a great deal of pride that, you

know, I was able to do that.

IN: You mentioned a couple of times when you went above and

beyond in doing things. Was that something that was common

with your job? You had to do a lot of things that you might not

WARD1 21

have been exactly asked to do, but you guys went ahead and stayed

to get the job done anyway?

BW: Well, I think you’ll find that that’s—that’s pretty much the nature

of the worker in this area. I don’t know if it’s predominantly the

heritage of people from the area, but we have a great work ethic!

The company knew that the workers from Bethlehem would do

whatever it took to keep the plant running, and they proved that

time after time. I don’t know if that answers what you were

asking?

IN: I think it does. Who was your boss, and what was he or she like?

BW: Oh boy, we had so many bosses! I think in the beginning the

hierarchy of the steel was you had a line foreman, you had a gang

leader. Well actually, if you talk—your direct boss, he was the A

man on the job. Above the A man was the line foreman. Above

the line foreman was the shift foreman. Above the shift foreman

was the general foreman. Above the general foreman was the

division foreman, and then the division superintendent. So there

were many levels of bosses.

If you ask me: who was my boss? The last boss I had was

Butch Horn. He was down at the coke works, and he was a

division foreman. And he was not too much older than myself, and

he was very safety conscious, and he was very much a go-getter,

and knew how to do things. Of course, he had learned through

coming up much the same way I did, except he was not an

apprentice. He worked his way up, became an A rigger, and then

became a temporary foreman, and then a line foreman, and then a

division foreman.

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IN: What was your relationship with the management like?

BW: [Pause] That’s a tough one. I didn’t get along with a lot of the

upper level foremen. There were some that I liked, and that were

good, but there were some that I wouldn’t give you two cents for.

I think a lot of them had themselves, and their own interests, above

everything else. But the ones that were genuinely interested in the

plant, their own work, and you—they were the better ones. The

ones that were more people oriented, I think, were the best ones.

IN: What was your relationship with the other workers like?

BW: That was the best! I mean, you go in there every day, and you see

these guys for eight hours a day, five days a week, minimum. I

mean, you’re not only working with them—you come in in the

morning, and you know everything about their family. You know

everything about their entire existence. You know where they go

to church. You know what they do on their off times.

So you become very fast friends, and of course, when you’re

in that close proximity to somebody every day, you have to

develop a relationship, or you can’t trust anybody that you don’t

know that well. So, it’s kind of like a trust thing as well. So you

get these close associations, and you begin to know that you can

trust this fellow or that fellow. And these relationships just grow

and build. And you know, even today, I see somebody that I

haven’t seen in, you know, six months or a year, and it’s somebody

I worked with, it’s like, you know—it’s like it was yesterday.

IN: What were the people like that you worked with, in terms of

ethnicity, gender, background?

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BW: The people I worked with came from all ethnic backgrounds,

mostly men. There was one woman in our department [knocking

sound] Excuse me one second. You’re going to have to go over

that question again, sorry.

IN: Okay, what were the people like that you worked with, as far as

ethnicity, gender, and background?

BW: Okay, the people came from all ethnic backgrounds. There were

Polacks and Hunks and Italians and Germans, and English people

and Irish people. There were only two Afro-Americans in my

department. There were many Spanish and Mexicans. It was just

a melting pot. The backgrounds: some of them were educated;

some of them were high school dropouts. Most of them had

graduated high school. I think by and large, most of them in my

department were crazy, half nuts, or all the way nuts! We had

some certifiables on it, that’s for sure.

IN: What other groups did you mingle with?

BW: Gee, whiz! It was a melting pot, so you mingled with everybody

[laughs]. It wasn’t like, you only mingled with the machinists, or

you only mingled with the burners. You got to see—I mean, when

I started there were like twelve or thirteen thousand guys working

there, so I got to meet and see and work with the hugest variety of

people that you can imagine. I mean, you know, it’s just like, well,

you guys go to a big school. I mean, how many people go to

Lehigh?

IN: Forty-five hundred.

BW: That’s a pretty big group, and you guys probably know, what, at

least ten percent of them, right? So, the ethnic background that

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you guys see is pretty diverse as well. I think, too, that you’re

looking at natives, and people that are settled in one area, and

come from long-term people that have been in the Valley for a

long time. So that’s probably a little bit different, because you

guys see people that are more in flux than I would have seen.

IN: How did the Bethlehem Steel community socialize? Were there

separate events for different levels in the hierarchy that you saw?

BW: Socializing with Bethlehem Steelworkers—that ran the gamut.

Again, you had people that were country club bound, and people

that were corner bar bound. There were people that were very

prosperous, and then you had people that maybe weren’t so

prosperous. So again, the social experiences that you had were

probably, as a worker, limited, because you were not invited, or

expected, or allowed, at the functions of the upper management.

IN: Speaking, too, of the community—how did Bethlehem Steel play a

role in your community at the time?

BW: Well, earlier on, Bethlehem Steel helped all of the community

organizations. I think they were responsible for helping to

establish a lot of the social clubs on the south side, and the north

side. And if some of these social clubs needed something, say, a

roof, boiler, there might be people that come over from the steel to

have that done. If it wasn’t sanctioned, or taken care of by

somebody in management, it could have been just a bunch of

workers coming together to do it.

I remember one particular project. We had lights and a

couple of towers that were donated by Bethlehem Steel to one of

the ball fields down below Hellertown. And the lights and the

WARD1 25

towers were donated, but some of the guys went out to put them

up. So, it’s much larger than just saying that, “Oh, well they gave

money.” I mean, they gave money, but they also made sure that

the community that was affected realized that the people in that

community participated in those benefits to the community as well.

So, you know, if your church needed a new roof, maybe somebody

in management would pull a few strings, or maybe he himself

donated some money, but he also might have got some carpenters

and riggers over there to do the work, you know.

Some of it was paid for by company, on company time;

some of it was volunteer work. Some of it was paid for out of

somebody with a lot of money’s pocket, out of pocket expenses.

So that, too, was really broad, how the community was affected by

the steel, and the workers. It wasn’t just management; it was all

the way down, from the laborers, all the way up to the top

management. They all had a hand in building this community.

IN: I think we’re going to switch the tapes right now.

BW: Okay.

IN: Bruce, was there a union at Bethlehem Steel?

BW: Yes, there was a union at Bethlehem Steel. I was a member of the

International Steelworkers’ Union 2599, and that covered the

workers in the beam yards of the steel.

IN: And now, were there different unions for the different positions at

Bethlehem Steel?

BW: Well, there were three local unions that composed the Trilocal,

which was 2598, 2599, and 2600. And they covered different

workers in different jobs in the plant.

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IN: Did you have a choice to join the union, or was that something that

was mandatory once you started working there?

BW: Well, when I started in 1973, you—you were a union member as

soon as you started, and they deducted your union dues from your

paycheck from day one. So you really didn’t have a choice, and

there was only one or two people that I knew of—and this is

stemming back to 1941, when the union first came in—there were

only one or two people that I knew of that had not been members

of the union.

IN: Now, how did you feel about the union? Did you feel like it was

something that was beneficial for you? Or did you just feel like it

was something that was just kind of there, in the background?

BW: Well, when I first started, I thought, “Ah, gee whiz, you know!

There goes how much money every month to these people?” You

know, I couldn’t see why I had to pay them. But I learned very

shortly that when you go to work for a big industry, a union is an

absolute necessity. You need to have a way of dealing with

complaints that you might have against the union. I mean, excuse

me, against the company. You need to have a method to be able to

deal with complaints you have against the company, and without a

union, you have no way of dealing with the company.

IN: Now, is it safe to say that most people felt the same way that you

do about that, in terms of--?

BW: I would say anybody that’s a member of a union today is pretty

much of a staunch union member, and it’s very important to have

unions today. You don’t really realize how protected, and how

much you need that protection, ‘til you lose the things that a union

WARD1 27

helped you get. Unions were established in the beginning because

companies might have taken advantage of workers, and workers

over the years worked very hard to get certain benefits, which are

slowly going by the wayside, with the way the companies are

working today.

IN: How did you participate in the union? Were there any union

sanctioned events, and things like that? Or was it more just

something that was there?

BW: Well, you definitely go to union meetings, and participate in union

elections, and having a hand with who is representing you, and

also what’s going to happen with each contract. You try to stay

informed with what the union is trying to do, and what the

company is trying to do. Because if you don’t, then the company

can feed you this whole line, and then not back it up.

And I think that’s what happened at the end, at the steel

company. They kept saying, “Oh, we’re going to modernize.

We’re going to take the money that you gave us for not getting this

extra weeks’ vacation, and the holiday that we took away, and

we’re going to put that money towards modernizing. We’re going

to make sure that your benefits are funded into the future.” And

gee whiz, I mean, they said it, and we had contracts, but [pause]

stuff fell through. So even with the protection of a union, these

things fell through.

I’d say that the Steelworkers’ Union tried as hard as they

could to keep the advances that they made over the years. But you

can see, with the picture of today’s economy, and the companies

today, that unions are in trouble as well as these big companies.

WARD1 28

What’s going to be the result is that the worker that does the

physical things, and work out in the field, is going to be taken

advantage of more and more and more. And his level of existence

is going to decline more and more, and we are going to become a

third-class country again.

And that’s very frightening, because we worked very hard to

be the world leader in a lot of the things that we’ve done. And I

think unions were very much a part of that. You know, making

companies take responsibility for pensions and health care and

what not. That’s all being lost. So yeah, I’m for a union, and

yeah, it’s not going the way that it’s supposed to go, you know.

We’re losing ground. I don’t like to see that.

IN: How did war affect Bethlehem Steel, and your job in particular?

BW: Let’s see. You have to go to, pretty much, the Gulf War. No, even

that. War really didn’t affect my position in Bethlehem Steel all

that much, because I came in after Vietnam, and by the Gulf War I

was just about out of the steel. So war didn’t really affect my

position with the steel all that much. I mean, at one time they

supplied all the ships for the Great White Way. They supplied all

the armaments and guns for the Navy, and the Army. And all the

big guns, originally, were made by United States Steel and

Bethlehem Steel. But today, no. Can’t give you an affirmative on

that one.

IN: How were you affected by layoffs?

BW: Well, let’s see. When I started in ’73, I worked for almost two

years before I was laid off. And then I worked from ’75 until ’82,

I believe. In ’82 and ’83 I was laid off for about eighteen months,

WARD1 29

and then I worked until ’95, right up to the end of ’95. So I was

laid off several times in my career.

IN: And what was the reaction of you and your coworkers to the

layoffs?

BW: Well, I think we all had a sense that the steel was going down. I

mean, you could see that they were closing different facilities and

different shops, and they weren’t doing the repair work or the

modernization that they said they were going to do. A lot of the

foreign steel was coming in and taking the place of the steel that

we were making, because it was cheaper, and it was produced

because the country was helping to subsidize the output of foreign

steel.

There were advantages that foreign steel took of us, as a

country and as a steel producer. They could subsidize their

workers. They could import things at a much cheaper price. There

cost of labor was much less. They didn’t need pollution controls.

They didn’t have unions. They could just run their workers

overtime without paying them. They could bring steel in here at a

discounted rate, just to sell it under our manufacturing price, which

drove the price down, which hurt our business, which made us

close shops. So, I don’t know if that answers your question. What

was the original question, anyway?

IN: The original question was: what was your, and your coworkers’

reaction to the layoffs?

BW: Well, we didn’t really like to see that, because it made us aware

how at risk our jobs were, and then ultimately how we all lost our

jobs. You’ve got to understand something: all previous

WARD1 30

generations to myself—they worked their entire lives at the steel.

We came in in the early, mid-seventies, late seventies. We were

the last generation. Every other generation had new, young kids

coming in, that they could train, and that would pick up the slack,

and that would lend a hand of carrying equipment, and help them

out when they needed to learn something.

We were the last generation; we had nothing to do with

people coming in. There was nobody coming in that we were

going to tell what to do. There was nobody coming in to carry that

chain ratchet, or that burning outfit, or to roll those tanks for us. It

was, we were still the young guys, at forty-five and fifty years old.

The writing is on the wall when that’s happening, you know?

IN: So where were you on the last cast?

BW: On the last cast I was down at the coke works. I was a truck helper

at the time. And the day before the last cast, I managed to have to

come up to the blast furnace area, and I got to see the day before

the last cast. I actually have some pictures of the second to last

cast. [Laughs] Or, the day before the last cast. So I was down at

the coke works, working on the equipment handling division.

IN: What does that day mean to you, and what do you think you would

like everyone to remember about the last cast?

BW: Well, we had this great steel-making facility here in the Bethlehem

that was an integrated steel facility, meaning that we made steel

from scratch. And the last cast means that is no more. I think that

if you look at an industrialized nation that is losing their

manufacturing base, that’s pretty disheartening. I think if you

look, you need to remember that great things were done here in

WARD1 31

Bethlehem, and now there is no more of that happening currently.

So you have to—you have to be ready for that big change,

and a lot of us are suffering through that. I mean, you’re not going

to have those good jobs anymore, and you’re not going to have that

income anymore. And I think everything is changing, and I don’t

think it’s for the good. Like a lot of those changes are not good,

and I think that makes me worry about the future of the economy,

and the future of the country.

IN: How would you say that the South Bethlehem community as a

whole is different, without Bethlehem Steel?

BW: Well, I’d say that the south side of Bethlehem, as a whole, is

different because you don’t have vibrancy. You don’t have the

dirt, you don’t have the smell, you don’t have the traffic. You

don’t have the banks being full at quitting time on Thursday,

payday. You don’t have the taverns being full every day after

work. You don’t have the markets that you did at that time. You

don’t have the life, the vibrancy, that you did when Bethlehem

Steel was running.

IN: How do you think Bethlehem Steel on the whole should be

remembered?

BW: That’s a tough one! I mean, you’re looking at a company that

helped win two world wars, a company that dominated the New

York City sky line from 1920 to 1975, a corporate giant of this

great country of ours. One that had shipbuilding facilities on both

our coasts, one that had manufacturing facilities all up and down

the east coast. One that helped build the bridges and the highways

of this whole country. I think if you look around any facility, and

WARD1 32

you look at the steel that’s in it, you can pretty much realize that

it’s all gone, you know? It’s a way of life, and we’re going to see

it again. A big loss.

IN: Do you have any memorabilia, such as photos, or your tool belt,

that you took from the steel before it was closed down?

BW: Yeah, I have my tools. They’re setting in the corner there, not so

much as a reminder, but you know, I might have to pick them up

and use them again. I have pictures. I have, oh, about eight or ten

years worth of pictures that I took inside of the plant, of some of

the places that I’ve been, some of the things that I’ve done, and

some of the people I worked with. It’s kind of a family album. I

kind of took it as a way to explain to people what I did and where I

was in the plant. But it became more of a, as I said, a family

album of the people that I worked with, and where I was.

IN: And I guess the last question we have is: can you tell us a little bit

about the film that you actually just premiered last week?

BW: Yeah, I completed a two-hour documentary about six months ago,

and it premiered Saturday night at the Banana Factory here. There

were over two hundred people present. There was standing room

only. It was a comprehensive look at the lives of about twenty-five

people throughout the steel’s one hundred year history. It

chronicled people from supervisors to laborers, told a little bit

about the lives of people that worked there. It was a very long

project. I’m very proud of it, and look for it in a gift shop, or a

website near you soon.

IN: Great!

[End of Interview]