The only major hurdle left was the mill itself, mothballed with care but desperately in need of renovation. As part of its agreement with McDonald, U.S. Steel committed close to $3 million to the project: new paint, new pipes, and one undertaking that at times seemed comparable to relocating the Cheops pyramid. McDonald Works had operated on special, 25-cycle power generated at Ohio Works, which had already been demolished. To get the mill back on line, Houck had to transplant a huge 15,000-kilowatt generator and an even larger 25,000-horsepower motor to the mill. To support them, he had to buttress the floor of the plant with 800 cubic yards of concrete.
Workers, all formerly with the McDonald Works (about one-third were collecting U.S. Steel pensions), were recalled, and, on December 1, 1981, the 14" mill rolled steel once more. Two weeks later, Houck, Tod, Roth, local officials, mill workers and a gaggle of press gathered for the official opening. That morning, as he took reporters through the mill, Houck was unable to show them glistening billets being crunched into shape by 1,200-pound rollers; his crew couldn't get the generator going. At the reopening ceremony, standing in front of a huge sign that read " 14" Shape Mill Rolls Again," Houck confided the awful truth. Then, as though providence had graciously relented, the steam whistle sounded, signaling that the mill was about to start up.
It was a day of promise for Youngstown, the television commentators reported: Steel with a capital "S" had returned to the Mahoning Valley. Houck, as proud and hopeful as anyone present, knew better. Big Steel had departed forever. "The industry had retrenched, and was going to continue to do so," he explains, and the attempts to save small pieces of the giant faced an uncertain future. That future, moreover, shouldn't look like the past--not unless the Mahoning Valley wanted to be as dependent on one industry as it had been before. "If you see that parking lot full," observes Houck, "you'll know that I've failed." Huge plants and huge work forces have no place in scaled-back times; fewer bodies, more productivity, and a carefully culled product line are the orders of the day. "Skinny-down," says Houck "Skinny-down."
Today, Houck's favorite phrase--"skinny-down" -- is the rule at McDonald Steel. When he was drawing up his "Save the District" report, it quickly became apparent that only drastic cuts and radical new efficiencies would enable him to hold on to this piece of history. "Productivity used to be a dirty word here," he concedes.
Then, he presided over 32 managers, who oversaw a work force of 800; those 800 men and women operated four mills, three shifts a day, while another 600 or 700 staffed the offices. "Then there was the corporate structure," Houck explains. "A division manager here at the plant, a general superintendent at Ohio Works, a manager of steel operations in Pittsburgh, an administrative vice-president . . . all of that corporate overhead and confusion.
"When you wanted $10,000 to buy a widget," he continues, "they'd want an engineering study, then a review by accounting. . . . It was an atmosphere that was conducive to not doing things." There was also the burden of a Sears-catalog-size collection of work rules that had evolved over the years, the result of management's acquiescence to union demands. "Each man knew all of the things that he didn't have to do," says Houck. And there was the ordeal of labor negotiations every three years -- all of this transpiring in a context of growing apprehension about the future of the steel industry itself.
Today, when he talks about structure, Houck refers to himself as "a president without a vice-president." It is a phrase that says much about the new company. His office staff numbers a lean eight; there are four superintendents. Now that a second mill, the 8" mill, has been reactivated, the work force totals 126, running one shift a day. "In the old days, we had a department for everything," Houck notes with a slight grimace, "production scheduling, order entry, advertising, sales. We had an entire floor of billing girls who worked round the clock." Now there are individuals, innovation, and involvement. Houck does most of the selling himself, and relies on outside vendors whenever he can. "We've created a helluva lot of spinoff jobs -- maybe 300," he beams.
That, in fact, is one of the accomplishments of which he is most proud: job creation in the new small companies that he, Tod, Roth, and the others believe must ultimately replace Big Steel in Youngstown's economy.
"Jerry [Sturdevant], a retired bricklayer from U.S. Steel, came to me and said, 'Would you be interested in hiring us if we formed a little bricklaying company?" Houck explains. "It's a beautiful service for us. I don't have a bricklaying crew standing around stacking bricks, waiting for work, and Jerry's willing to come in on weekends to reline the furnaces when they're not in use." S&R Contractors Co. is already a viable entity, picking up some outside jobs in addition to its work for McDonald.
McDonald also makes use of outside help for environmental testing and diesel repairs. "Before, we had an entire diesel shop staffed with people," Houck points out. "Now, we have one ex-diesel mechanic who works on an as-needed basis Contracting out -- for everything from preventive maintenance to marketing -- is a tremendous advantage I have over U.S. Steel."
But McDonald's biggest advantage may be the men and women who work there. "When we hired people," explains Houck, "we said, 'You'll be expected to do whatever's necessary to get the product made and shipped.' " Unemployed steelworkers, many of whom had grown uneasy with the increasingly bureaucratic style of U.S. Steel and their own union, were ready to give new ways a chance. Work rules that had accumulated like dust over decades were whisked away "Then, crane operations were handled by the crane department, and you might have to have one operator in each crane. Now, when you need to move something, anybody -- maybe a guy from packaging -- just goes up and runs that crane." Eager to get back to work, some workers voluntarily accepted steps down in status and pay, a virtual impossibility in the old regime.
