Lackawanna: Bethlehem backbone of 20th century America

It seems so long ago but it wasn't.

I was raised on steel. I went to the mill with my dad when I was a teen. All y dad's friends were connected to if not employed by Bethlehem Steel.

Bethlehem Steel Lackawanna paralleled the rise and fall of Lackawanna, Buffalo and Western New York. The growth and decline of unions were another parallel. as it was with the population and tax base of Buffalo and Lackawanna.

I remember reading an article in Newsweek about how in a ten-year period, about 1968 to 1978, real wages and compensation for union workers increased rapidly while productivity remained flat. The corrosive relationship between management and labor was probably the best explanation for the demise of steel in western New York. And I recall a similarly striking report of how Bethlehem Steel executives populated the top wage earners in America.

Lackawanna Bethlehem output peaked in 1969. In the summer of 1970, I spent about ten weeks on a well-paid summer job in the strip mill. Wages were good, especially relative to the cost of public college tuition. I believe that my base wage was over $3 an hour -- with lots of overtime and chances available for higher wage rates and incentive pay -- when the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour and a semester of SUNY tuition was about $200.

The Bethlehem Management Club was the center of my summer life in the 1960's.