W&K Steel rejects peace offering

February 19, 2011 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

By Mike Wereschagin

Owners of a Rankin metal fabricating plant rejected a peace offering by the Allegheny County councilman who accused them of running a "sweatshop."

Shortly before announcing he wouldn't try to overturn County Executive Dan Onorato's veto of a bill designating W&K Steel a sweatshop, council President Rich Fitzgerald called the owners, Ed and Celeste Wilhelm.

Council passed the bill Tuesday. Onorato vetoed it Friday.

"He told Ed that he wanted to try to call a truce. Ed said, 'No way. We're not a sweatshop. What you did was wrong,'" Celeste Wilhelm said. "We didn't start this fight, but we'll see it through."

"This was trying to put the olive branch out," Fitzgerald said. "We've taken her up on her offer to (tour the factory). We're giving them what they wanted. Now that's not good enough."

Fitzgerald noted council can still try to reimpose sanctions on the company, which would prevent it from doing business with the county. He said Thursday he wouldn't try to override the veto because W&K was working to fix the issues that were the focus of a union-backed campaign against the firm.

"Rich has said things got better, things improved. Well, nothing has changed between Monday and (Thursday). We were never a sweatshop," Wilhelm said. "For Mr. Fitzgerald to act as if he's fixed something is just wrong."

Celeste Wilhelm said she wants an apology and a retraction.

We want County Council to say 'We made a mistake,'" Wilhelm said.

"Absolutely not," Fitzgerald said. Council Democrats said they were acting on allegations — denied by the Wilhelms — over low pay and dangerous conditions at W&K.

The Wilhelms and their attorneys at the Downtown firm Blumling & Gusky are considering suing County Council, Wilhelm said.

"We get sued all the time," Fitzgerald said. "Lawsuits come on all sorts of issues. If we hadn't done something, we may have been sued."

According to the sweatshop law County Council passed in 2007, responsibility for making sure the county is not buying goods made in sweatshops falls to the companies and the county's purchasing department. Onorato's veto noted that W&K is not a county vendor, and the law does not apply to it.

John Deegan, the county's purchasing director, said he's investigated three or four sweatshop allegations in the past four years. None involved W&K, and all were overseas factories. None of the claims turned out to be true, he said.

The longest inquiry, into shoemaker Rocky Boots, took about a month and ended when Deegan got a letter from the company's president listing the factories where the boot components were made and noting none were the Chinese factory from which the complaints originated.

The shortest took a few days, and involved a type of shirt that, it turned out, the county wasn't buying.

"We went back to the (shirt) vendor, and talked to the vendor," then verified what the vendor said by checking the shirts' tags, Deegan said.