Rustbelt Phoenix
Rustbelt Phoenix, a 34-minute documentary, is the latest in his series examining companies like Bethlehem Steel and Saturn with the best of intentions: supporting the unions in major industries and advocating that workers be given a voice in decisions that affect them. In general, his previous videos like Partners: Bethlehem Steel and the United Steelworkers, Working Together: Saturn and the UAW and Troubled Partnerships, produced over the past decade glorified the possibilities and virtues of a world without class conflicts—sure, there are disputes among the bosses and the unionized workers but nothing that trust and respect cannot overcome.
To his credit, Bass picks up the big issues of the American economy, focusing in this documentary on the steel industry, with special attention to the plant at Sparrows Point, MD, which—as Bethlehem Steel—was in 1959 the largest integrated steel mill in the world, with more than 31,000 unionized workers. The documentary traces the decline and alleged resurgence of the Sparrows Point plant. Some of the footage—of production in the mill and of a kind of quality circle meeting between supervisors and a union committee—tries to show the modern steel industry from inside the mill and inside the labor relations area. There are other clips of demonstrating workers, supportive politicians and union strategists, illustrating the precarious status of steelworkers today.
One of the most disturbing interviews in this “documentary” is venture (or vulture) capitalist Wilbur Ross, who gets plenty of happy screen time. He sits, yoda-like, in his office, noodling with a screen full of figures on his computer and burbling platitudes about respect for unions, strategic investment, trust and The American Dream.
In real life, Ross created the International Steel Group (ISG) and scrounged up a number of steel companies that were in bankruptcy. As part of these bankruptcies, the steel companies threw their pension funds on to the taxpayers and cut off health insurance coverage for retirees. Through ISG, Ross held these companies for 18 months and then flipped them to an even bigger global capitalist, Lakshmi Mittal, for a personal profit of more than $ 150 million. In the spirit of trust, Ross them gobbled up some bankrupt coal companies to start the process anew. He is now the target of a series of lawsuits after the disaster in January, 2006, at the Sago mine, which he owns.
In the matter of full disclosure, I work at a community college just up the street from the Sparrows Point plant and teach the steelworkers from the union local, so I have seen the reality—and not the dream—of workers pitched into the frigid waters of the global economy. My experience with the wholesome relationships depicted in this documentary is completely different, providing an opportunity to evaluate the very nature of documentary movies. While they are factual, based upon real events and putting forth real people, they are subject to the same biases, distortions and self-servings as any other history.
It is also important to understand how quickly the global economy makes such documentaries almost irrelevant. After Ross sold the ISG to Mittal, the global conglomerate continued to accumulate more capacity, winning a hostile takeover of Arcelor in the summer of 2006. As a result, the Sparrows Point plant, whose relations seem so constructive in the documentary, is in chaos: the facility is “in play,” buffeted by anti-trust legislation, declining steel prices, and production outages caused by skimpy investment in production. There are constant threats of either another sale or a possible closure. In any case, Rustbelt Phoenixsuddenly seems dated, anachronistic, a half-hour of wishful thinking.
Just as Ross talks one game in the documentary and plays another, so do the highest officers of the Steelworkers Union. President Leo Gerard and District Director Dave McCall talk very tough—at one point, McCall describes a threat by steelworkers in Cleveland to seize a Weirton mill and chain themselves to the machines but they positively glow over Wilbur Ross, whom they “came to trust.” Their professed belief, moreover, that fewer steel companies make a better industry for the workers violates hundreds of years of anti-trust thinking and legislation.
The cruelest accusations that any documentary can suffer are that it is false or fabricated: the episodes in Rustbelt Phoenix—especially the production discussion— seem staged. The ability of a production crew to film a meeting inside Sparrows Point, a facility with the highest security protections, makes it look like the script had already been vetted. Clearly the interview with Wilbur Ross in his inner sanctum presents this capitalist in the softest of hues.
Bill Barry Community College of Baltimore County bbarry@ccbcmd.edu
