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Chapter 11 U.S. Steel, Marathon Oil, and Depression U.S. Steel’s 1989 annual report was crafted as a ten-year retrospective of a decade of change. One of the most obvious was the company’s 1986 name change to USX Corporation. But that cosmetic makeover did not even approach the significance of other changes. Over the span of ten years, noted the annual report, “USX acquired about $10 billion in assets , primarily energy; sold close to $7 billion of assets and businesses; and wrote off approximately $3.5 billion, primarily in steel.” All of this carried obvious implications for the USX workforce. “In 1979, there were 171,654 on the [USX] payroll—all in steel and related businesses. In 1989, that number had decreased to about 53,000, including employees in the energy sector.”1 U.S. Steel’s corporate evolution during the 1980s left the company “leaner and more sharply focused,” but achieving these results “would prove to be a bumpy ride.”2 Numerous trends—in steelmaking technology, in market economics, in labor relations, in coal and coke production, and in the very nature of the integrated steel company—all began to reach the point of finality where trends invariably lead. Such trends had played significant roles in U.S. Steel’s efforts to rationalize. The company’s rationalization effort already had resulted in major changes—some more economically beneficial than others. By the start of the 1980s, though, rationalization had taken on a more intentional and in some respects a more radical demeanor. Rationalization now would expand from downsizing into dismemberment. But at the same time U.S. Steel was looking to merge its traditional corporate interests with new ventures, primarily in what the company’s 1989 annual report described as the energy sector. All of this seemed directed toward a concerted effort for U.S. Steel to reinvent itself, the results of which would be treated by corporate America as a classic story of resilience and survival. To coal miners in Gary Hollow, though, the story was much different. The optimism that spread throughout Gary Hollow in 1979 as work began to pick up had proved illusory. By 1980 optimism had turned to pessimism . Demonstrating just how quickly things could change in the coalfields , U.S. Steel announced a layoff of some 170 miners from Gary’s No. 138 U.S. Steel, Marathon Oil, and Depression 14 mine in June 1980. More layoffs and reduced workdays were to follow.3 By year’s end the number of Gary Hollow coal miners had dropped from 1979’s total of 1,454 to 1,271.4 The 183 person reduction accounted for nearly 13 percent of the mining workforce. The Bluefield Daily Telegraph carried news of the Gary Hollow layoffs on the first page of its June 18, 1980, edition.5 Less than a year before, the paper had carried a page 1 story titled “Gary Is an Oasis, Employment-Wise.” That story, noted in the previous chapter, was accompanied by the same two photographs of Gary houses and the Alpheus preparation plant that now accompanied the June 18 layoff story. The current story’s positioning and photographs so similar to the earlier story may have been coincidental (if not someone’s dark sense of humor), but the two Daily Telegraph first pages viewed side by side underscored the coalfield’s version of a rags-to-riches-to-rags saga. And as disheartening as the layoffs were, they were but the first in a series of blows that left folks in Gary Hollow reeling. One of those blows happened somewhat imperceptibly, but when census figures for 1980 were released in 1982, they revealed that Gary’s population continued to slide downward. The census listed Gary’s population as 2,233, with 791 households, a 26 percent decline from the time of its incorporation.6 As for the blow occasioned by U.S. Steel’s June announcement, Gary Hollow coal miners interviewed for the Bluefield Daily Telegraph story were somewhat philosophical about their plight. Most knew that layoffs were coming, and most expressed resentment toward government footdragging in its failure to force more utility companies to convert from oil-burning to coal-burning power plants. According to Stewart Preseley, employed at the No. 14 mine for six years, “I think the company had a choice to make and they made what they thought to be the best one. With coal production at the low level it is there...

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