Buffalo's Voices Of Steel

My father came from Pennsylvania to work in the steel plant and he was a foreman. I am 74 years old.

My Uncle was one of the last guys to be laid off there. He was a specialty steel rolling operator.

I wish I had this version of America. By the time I’d come of age in 92, the politicians had destroyed most major industries. It was shit part time jobs and if your dad wasn’t in a big union job neither were you. Great program btw.

My grandfather work at at Bethlehem steel plant in buffalo back in the early 50’s into the mid 60’s his name was JC Mathis. He died at the early age of 34 of a massive heart attack. Never got a chance to meet him.

Another monumental film on the steel. ❤

Spent 30 yrs at Beth. Stl Lackawanna. Got married , raised children owned a house, car and vacationed every summer all on one salary, until my wife a nurse went to work weekends at OLV Hospital on weekends after oldest child was 9yrs old. That life style doesn't exist anymore. The end came in 1983. Went to a culinary school and worked in the food business for the next 30 yrs. .

My dad worked the open hearth. He then became an inspector . He worked there when the union first got in. After refusing to join the union , they pressured him to finally join.... he ended up being a shop steward.

U.S.still still at number one steel of the world.

I really enjoyed this video and the fine people who told their stories about this amazing industry. I’m 74 years old and English. I’m a metallurgist and a furnace designer, project engineer and sales guy, so I related very well to this video and to the talented hard working guys who worked in this industry. I’m sad it has declined but optimistic for its future in this changing world. 🇬🇧🍻

I was fortunate to have had a tour of the Bethlehem Lackawana plat as a high school student in the 1960s. As impressive as the former workers there describe. The level of pollution that accompanied the plant is amazing by today's standards. The smell was pervasive, as one of the people in the video mentioned . When my family drove through Lackawana to visit relatives in Hamburg, my mother would insist on rolling up the windows, even in summer, in a car that did not have AC. All the roofs in Lackwana were tinted orange from the dust. I remember flying from Buffalo to Detroit in the 70s, and seeing the water in Lake Erie a dark orange color for a considerable distance offshore, up to a very sharp line of demarcation where the water was its natural blue. My dad was not in the steel industry, but worked all his life in the Huntley Station, a coal-fired electric power plant ion the Niagara River that finally closed only a few years ago. It was also a hot, dirty, polluting place (though not as spectacularly so as the steel plants). Like the steelworkers quoted in the video, he had a good unionized job, with vacation time, sick leave, medical insurance, and a defined benefit pension, in a job that enabled him to support his wife, send me to college, own a home in the Town of Tonawand, get a new car every few years, and ultimately retire to Florida. I find all these people wholly admirable, who were able to live the middle class lives they did because their careers, and my childhood, coincided with the "great compression," that period in U.S. economic history with the least income inequality, which existed in large part because of the influence of industrial unions and effective regulation.

When I was 18, 1968 quit school went to work in the steelmill, in Lockport basically called the tall smoke stacks. how did I get here? My father was a welder. My brother was a heater on a 16 inch barmall 13:39 . My brother was a 8:16 rougher and then he was in Vietnam My brother-in-law worked in bars shipping my cousin worked in the office, and then I was told i was making more money than my guidance teacher back in high school. I remember going to a union contract meeting drunk, and our president of the union yelling out saying here’s something else they gave us that we didn’t ask for.

My dad was the funeral director on Lake Ave in Blasdell. I remember burying these guys after they met a grizzly death. One day when I was a high school senior, I visited the BOF. That day I decided to get a college education.

My husband worked there after his enlistment in the service at 17, at 20yrs.old in 1955 he started work at Bethlehem Steel, worked there 40 yrs.

when you work with someone who is much older than you, even the same age as your parents and the job has a high risk that person will treat you like his child, his immediate family is just his junior, he will teach you what his senior taught him (mostly by very firm and extraordinary discipline) where the juniors will inherit the same enthusiasm, confidence, firmness and discipline as their seniors and that is an extraordinary life experience.

$27/hr in 1982 = $87/hr in 2023. That is INSANE. That's $4,582/week or $18,328/month in today's money. No wonder the Chinese eat our lunch in steel production.

VERY WELL PUT TOGETHER!!!!!!! NONE OF THE JOBS TODAY COMPARE.

Terrific documentary. The stories were just great.

My father worked at the Wickwire plant on the river rd in town of tonawanda. Owned by Colorado Fuel and Iron. It closed in early 60s. My mom and dad were into iron and steel, my mother would iron and my dad would steal !!

I understand this was a human interest story. I recommend adding some facts for the next revision. Some of the exterior stills had clues such as automobiles which allow an approximate date. There were scenes of the raw materials to pig iron to steel then to finished products. The individual parts of the steel making process should be identified. One of the stills showed Hulitt unloaders, the taw material stockpile and the stoves and pig iron blast furnaces in the background. Translating the hourly wages to the current (at the time of the documentary production) equivalent as well as comparing the very early starting wages to the then minimum wage. Also the economic impact to the Greater Buffalo area as steel grew then died would be useful big picture data. Buffalo didn't copy Detroit but the loss of steel wasn't good.

Great documentary!