AlterNet: Sudden Death: "All told, after a steady decline in accidents and deaths at steel plants, USWA reported nine fatalities of its union members in steel plants in 2004, up from just three in 2003. Already this year, USWA says six workers have been killed in steel-related accidents, including Velma Burnette, crushed by a loose load of steel at the Republic Engineer Plant in Loraine, Ohio on January 27, the first woman killed at the plant in 40 years."

...

"But over the past 20 years, automation of much of what occurs inside the plants has drastically reduced fatalities and accidents.

During the same period however, steel production at U.S. plants plummeted, largely because of foreign competition and an over-saturation of steel on the market."

...

"But then, in recent years, a worldwide steel boom began to change the industry's fate and American steel plants have fired up production once again. According to the American Iron and Steel Institute, U.S. steel plants shipped off nearly six percent more product in 2004 than in 2003, and approximately 12 percent more than in 2002.

But while business is good, steel companies have suddenly found themselves without the 'old timers,' as they're called, whose mastery of their own specialized crafts has been particularly missed now that there's more work to be done. Ostensibly, a far younger, less experienced generation of workers like Herbie Tolman, have been thrust into technically demanding and often dangerous jobs without many of the veterans there to show them the safest way to work."

(Via Salon.)