Four Important People

One of the most powerful leaders for women steel workers has been Steffi Domike. Steffi grew up in Chile, exposed to the very oppressive Pinochet regime. Steffi started off as the first woman janitor at Clairton Coke Works and she remains highly committed to ensuring equality and rights for workers. Steffi has not stood still – earning a Masters degree as a teacher and producing documentary films such as Women of Steel and The River Ran Red about the 1892 Homestead strike.

WATCH WOMEN OF STEEL

Mike Stout was a Crane Operator at Homestead Mills from 1977-1987. He served as an assistant Grievance man in the mills, and won significant cases against management and its high-powered lawyers. As the mills shut down in the 1980’s, Mike became a community activist and worked tirelessly against U. S. Steel Management policies. Stout, along with Charlie McCollester initiated the Tri-State Conference on Steel and rallied workers into taking over Blast Furnace Dorothy #6. Throughout my making “City of Steel” Mike Stout has spot checked my editing of the film, making sure I did things correctly as far as the history of the steel mills was concerned. In 2020, Mike wrote a great book, “The Homestead Mill, the Final Ten Years. This book is a seminal record of what happened as the mills went into decline in the early 1980’s. Watch YouTube - Mike Stout

As a lifelong resident of Braddock, Pennsylvania, Tony Buba has captured through film the history of this once vibrant steel town. In many ways, Braddock is a reflection of what has happened in many parts of the United States. There is so much “human spirit” captured in Tony’s films – it makes you reflect on what once made this country great.   

WATCH NO PLACE BUT HOME by Tony Buba

Early in life, Charlie McCollester was a Steward machinist at Swissvale’s Union and Switch and Signal Corp. He then went on to study labor relations and became the Director of the Pennsylvania Center for the Study of Labor Relations at Indiana University. Charlie knows more of the history of strikes in Pittsburgh than anybody. In the late 70’s he became an activist and teamed up with Mike Stout and went to Youngstown where he was involved in a workers take over from Management of the Youngstown mills. In 1995, Charlie wrote “The Point of Pittsburgh” which goes into much detail about the labor struggle with the Mills in the Mon Valley.