A rash of accidents involving deaths and serious injuries has prompted U.S. Steel to schedule mandatory safety meetings led by top executives for hourly and management workers at its U.S. mills, starting tomorrow at its Mon Valley plants.

"The effort is to renew our employees' focus on safety," spokesman John Armstrong said.

Safety concerns have dogged the industry at a time when it is enjoying prosperity unseen in recent history. U.S. Steel's profits last year topped $1 billion, a 23-year high.

Three workers have died at U.S. Steel mills since September, according to United Steelworkers Union officials: a crane operator at the Gary, Ind., Works in September; a management employee at Gary who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in December; and a union worker who was crushed by a slow-moving train this month at the Granite City (Ill.) Works.

Union workers at U.S, Steel's Clairton Works held a protest rally over safety in August after a 44-year-old union worker lost his legs in a train accident.

Favorable business conditions have spurred speculation that the pressure on workers to produce may be making mills less safe. A 2003 labor agreement with the USW that radically altered the makeup of the work force and their job responsibilities is also being blamed.

"I'm not sure you can put it all on [the labor agreement]. I think it plays a part in it," said Michael Mitchell, president of USW Local 1014 at U.S. Steel's Gary Works.

Mitchell believes pressure to produce, increased overtime because of work force reductions and lack of training are other possible causes.

"Until all those things are looked at ... [accidents] are going to continue to happen," he said. "We have a terrible safety record as far as accidents and fatalities."

Armstrong said safety has improved when measured by two popular industry yardsticks: the number of accidents that resulted in workers missing work and the number of accidents that were required to be reported to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Last year, accidents that resulted in missed days of work reached their lowest level in 10 years while the so-called OSHA recordable rate was the second lowest, bettered only in 2003.

"That attests to the fact that it's not an issue of overtime and it's not an issue of production," Armstrong said.

Armstrong also said a study of accidents completed Nov. 19 revealed 50 percent of workers involved in accidents up to that point last year had not worked more than 40 hours in the seven days leading up to the accident and that 73 percent had not worked more than 48 hours over the same seven-day period.

Mike Wright, the union's top health and safety officer, said U.S. Steel is more concerned about making safety a disciplinary problem than getting at the root cause of the accidents.

"U.S. Steel is stuck on this idea that their problems are based on employee misconduct," Wright said. "The way to get after safety problems is to comprehensively analyze the safety of every job in the plant. ... If the meetings indicate they're going to start doing that, that's fine."

Union officials say what they are concerned about is the new labor agreement they signed with the company in May 2003.

The agreement, patterned after other contracts used to resurrect bankrupt steelmakers, rewrote the book on how dozens of mills jobs are performed and who must perform them. Simultaneously, many of the industry's most experienced workers were given incentives to retire in order to reduce labor costs.

Consequently, workers who remained are being asked to do new jobs, and seasoned workers are not around to help them.

"We need more training," said Steve Tunello, president of USW Local 1013 at U.S. Steel's Fairfield (Ala.) Works. "I imagine we're a lot like Clairton. We need more people."

Armstrong noted that the union agreed to the work rule changes.

"It's what's going to make our mills more efficient and has made our mills more efficient," he said.

Executive vice president John H. Goodish, who is in charge of the steelmaker's plants, will preside over the meetings. He will be accompanied by vice president David H. Lohr, U.S. Steel's No. 2 operations executive, and vice president of labor relations James D. Garraux.

The meetings are scheduled to last several hours and will feature a videotaped message from U.S. Steel President John P. Surma.

Similar sessions are planned at U.S. Steel's mills in the Slovak Republic and Serbia, Armstrong said.