Ormet reaches agreement

The following article appeared on the front page of the Oct. 21-22 Weekend edition of the Marietta Times:

By Connie Cartmell

The final agreement that will bring 900 Ormet Corp. employees back to work was reached Friday.

A power agreement with American Electric Power Co., announced Friday by Ormet, means that the 900 hourly workers, all members of United Steelworkers Union, will return to the company’s reduction plant, located in Hannibal, Monroe County, in a phased plan.

One-hundred-fifty workers returned to the plant this week, while another 100 workers will return by January to assist with the re-start, company officials said. One hundred new jobs may also be available due to the number of former workers that have moved on to other jobs or retired.

“(The workers) won’t be doing their own jobs right away, but will be helping with restarting, which is going to be a huge job,” said Ken Campbell, chief executive officer at Ormet, a major U.S. producer of aluminum, aluminum billet products and smelter-grade alumina.

“It will take us about six months from start to full ramp up.”

Prior to August when dozens of workers returned to the plant after agreeing with the company on a labor agreement, more than 1,200 union members had not worked at either of Ormet’s two Monroe County plants since going on strike in November 2004.

The power agreement means the company will be able to afford to reopen the six potlines at the reduction plant to full capacity. The company’s other Hannibal facility, an aluminum rolling mill, was sold to Aleris International last December and is not in operation.

The favorable agreement with AEP was helped along by the fact that the price of aluminum has more than doubled on the world market in the past two years that the plant has been closed.

“The price we’re paying now is higher than what was being paid when we closed down, but less than retail. We’re about in the middle,” Campbell said.

Electricity is a key component of the reduction plant’s mission.

The aluminum product, later used in the manufacture of automobiles, airplanes, construction, even in new housing, begins with powdered alumina, which is poured into pots, “zapped” with electricity, turned to molten metal, then poured into molds to be sold.

Late Friday, Monroe County officials, a worker at the cast house in the reduction plant and a union representative described their feelings about the news.

“This is very good news for the valley,” said Mark Shaw, contract coordinator with United Steel Workers.

“It’s been 26 months, the work stoppage was for 22 months and it’s been another three to four months negotiating with AEP,” he said.

Chuck Green, a nearly 18-year Ormet employee, said he’s heard rumors of the power agreement, but was thrilled to hear the news Friday.

Green 48, of 163 Cornerstone Drive, Marietta, returned to Ormet in mid-August after the labor agreement was finalized, but said the power agreement provides some security for his job too.

“I’m very pleased because if we didn’t get the power agreement and didn’t get the potlines up and running there’s no way we could get the cast house to survive, where I work,” Green said.

“With the pot rooms the cast house will survive. Without the pot rooms the whole plant would shut down eventually. ... It wasn’t cost effective the way we were having to do it.”

The average worker at the reduction plant earns about $20 an hour, along with full health care (no contribution), a 401K and pension plan. With all benefits, it works out to about $70,000 a year, Campbell said.

The response of Monroe County officials was quick and emotional.

“Fantastic,” said Francis “Sonny” Block, president of the board of Monroe County Commissioners. “Our prayers have been answered.”

Monroe Commissioner Gary Hudson breathed a sigh of relief, saying late Friday commissioners knew the agreement might be coming, but didn’t know when.

“I knew they were close,” Hudson said. “I’m elated. It’s fantastic news, I just can’t tell you. It’s time we had some good news in Monroe County.”

The ongoing strike and plant closure at Ormet caused the unemployment rate to soar to the highest in the state, 11.3 percent in May. By August, Hudson said the number dropped to a bit over 9 percent, still not good.

“We were up there before the plant even shut down,” he said. “This should help us out a lot, although all the employees going back to work are not from Monroe County.”

It’s expected some new jobs will be created next spring after all union members are recalled.

“We will be short people by the time we recall everybody,” Campbell said. “We know some of our workers have retired, some moved on to other jobs. The good news is there will be a bunch of new jobs for the last 100 people or so.”

The news is good, economically, for the entire region, said Mike Jacoby, director of Southeastern Ohio Port Authority.

“I think this is a big relief for the Mid-Ohio Valley,” Jacoby said. “Ormet is a big, big employer and this will ripple throughout the region.”

“We have companies in Washington County that supply Ormet,” Jacoby said.

At the same time, there was bad news for Burnside, La., where Ormet also announced Friday it will close the Burnside Alumina Division by the end of the year. Jobs will be gone for 250 employees there.

Workers from Burnside are not expected to be hired in Ohio for the Hannibal plant, he said, because of the vast distance between the two sites and because ample construction jobs have opened up there since Hurricane Katrina.

Loren Hartshorn, president of the local USWA 5724, said Campbell deserves the bulk of the credit for getting the plant back to being operational.

“His efforts are really appreciated,” Hartshorn said. “Ken was the major player in being able to successfully get a labor agreement and to now successfully reach a long-term agreement with American Electric Power.”

Campbell, at the helm of the dark and lifeless Ormet plant at Hannibal only since April, made a prediction to the handful of management employees left the day he arrived.

“I told them when I came that first day that I was going to fill the parking lot,” he said, adding that the plant is back online through the work of everyone involved.

“For some reason, everybody suddenly wanted to help and they did,” Campbell said. “They dropped their own agendas. It was cool to watch.”

Marietta Times reporter Sam Shawver and editor Justin McIntosh contributed.

Waning membership forces rural Ohio churches to close

The weekend edition’s religious section (Marietta Times Sept 29-Oct 1) featured an interesting article by the Associated Press. While the setting is western Ohio, the same trends are seen across the state. I don’t necessarily agree with all of the opinions expressed in the article, but as a whole it is well worth the time to read:

CARLISLE – Many of Ohio’s small, rural churches are fading – even dying – as their congregations age and younger generations find other ways and places to worship.

The United Methodist Church, with the bulk of its churches in towns of under 50,000 or in the country, illustrates one measure of the decline: Total membership in western Ohio slipped one-third between 1980 and 2004, from 352,348 to 237,374.

“There’s a church in our conference that has a McDonald’s Playland in it,” said Pat Hiegel, a member of the 195-year-old McKendree United Methodist Church in eastern Miami County, where worship attendance two weeks ago stood at 13 people. “These little country churches don’t offer that. McKendree does not offer guitars and drums and that type of music. It’s very traditional, very conservative. People today have to be entertained.”

Topscott Primitive Baptist Church in Carlisle organized in 1814 and closed in 2003. In the village of Casstown, the Lutheran Church, which was founded in 1827, closed in 2002.

Many of these churches are unsure of how to change with the times or whether they should embrace change at all. Some see a tension inherent in trying to keep the church relevant to younger generations, yet reverent to God.

“You get a quality of irreverence with the casual dress of pastors, roc ‘n’ roll music and high tech equipment that’s transforming the way many growing churches across the Miami Valley worship,” said Elder Eddie Garrett, 73, who heads a membership of about 15 at the Thompson Memorial Primitive Baptist Church in Franklin. “It takes away from the spirituality of the service.”

But Mike Slaughter, 55, senior pastor at Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church near Tipp City, one of the region’s largest churches, offers a different view.

“Jesus was considered irreverent,” he said. “Whatever the traditions of the religious people were, he violated those traditions. What he showed was true faith is how you treat people, how you made God make sense to people.”

Churches assume a primary role in building relationships and trust among people, especially in the countryside and in small towns, said Mark Partridge of Ohio University’s rural-urban policy program.

“They’re part of the glue that holds the community together,” Partridge said.

One of the area’s oldest surviving churches, McKendree, was founded in 1811 and held its services in a log cabin. Attendance reached about 80 to 100 people in the 1860’s and hovered around 60 in the 1940’s.

Today, two elementary pupils and one high school student attend McKendree, Hiegel said. The rest of those in attendance – typically about 15 people – range in age from mid-40’s to 90’s.

“It used to be churches were the only thing there was,” Hiegel said. “Now kids are so busy with soccer and football that churches just…,” she said, her words drifting off. “It’s a sad situation.”

Pastor Tim Reeves, who coordinates a United Methodist program that provides funding and educational programs, said rural congregations sometimes lack the resources to maintain aging churches, and to hire and keep a good pastor. In the Methodist church system, for example, it can cost 30 to 40 percent more to hire ordained elders instead of local pastors, who often have other jobs.

Garrett, whose small Primitive Baptist congregation shuns even instrumental accompaniment during hymns, sees another reason for exponential growth at larger churches.

Anonymity is appealing,” he said. “You get lost. Nobody knows your business. What they want is a religious country club. I pay my dues, and nobody says anything beyond that. That attracts the crowds.”