On strike in the Bayou.

• Author: Seymour, Chris
• Position: Bayou Steel Corp.

La Place, Louisiana Whoever shot at Hank Vasquez, Bayou Steel's chief negotiator, from the tall grass in a secluded spot not far from the steel mill hurt the union, says Ron Ferraro. Ferraro is the president of United Steelworkers Local 9121, which represents 220 workers who have been on strike against the Louisiana steelmaker for two years.

"We're so close to a settlement--our people are not going to jeopardize that" by attacking a company vice president, Ferraro says. "If anybody had a motive it would be the scabs in the plant who will lose their jobs when we come back."

The police have not identified a suspect in the shooting. But the incident is only the latest evidence of mounting tension and frayed nerves in this industrial Mississippi River town.

When the union's contract expired in 1993, the company made an offer even Vasquez concedes is "pretty aggressive." It includes no pay raises for six years (substituting incentive pay tied to performance), requires workers to pay part of their health-insurance costs, and allows the company to bring in temps to supplement union workers. Vasquez contends that the company can't afford to be more generous because of intense price competition among mini-mills like Bayou, most of which are not unionized.

The company also disputes Ferraro's assertion that a settlement is near. "Bayou Steel's position has basically not moved since a contract was offered at the governor's mansion one year ago," Bayou President Jerry Pitts says.

At the governor's-mansion meeting last March, Ferraro agreed to bring the company's offer to his members for a vote. Local 9121 attorney Louis Robein says that just before the vote, Vasquez sent him the company's proposed return-to-work procedure, which would have wiped out every worker's seniority. That and other "offensive" provisions, he says, turned members against the pact, and they voted it down 272-2.

Robein says the company has often used such "bait and switch"...