Black Monday: Youngstown Sheet & Tube shut its Campbell Works and took the valley down

Youngstown Sheet & Tube — the fifth-largest steelmaker in the United States, the largest employer in the Mahoning Valley — had passed into the hands of Lykes, a New Orleans conglomerate. The new owners ran the works as a cash source: by the 1970s crews were quietly stripping older facilities for parts to keep the other mills going. On 19 September 1977 — Black Monday — the company abruptly closed its Campbell Works and furloughed 5,000 workers.

The closures kept coming: Brier Hill shut in 1979, 1,500 more jobs, and U.S. Steel's Youngstown Works shed 3,500 — about 10,000 permanent layoffs in under three years. Steelworkers and clergy answered with the Ecumenical Coalition — headed by the Catholic bishop James Malone and an Episcopal bishop — and fought to reopen the Campbell Works under worker-community ownership. A feasibility study showed 4,000 jobs re-employed at a profit; the Carter administration promised federal loan guarantees in 1978, then withdrew them after the midterms under industry pressure. The effort collapsed.

The company did not outlive its own decision: Youngstown Sheet & Tube's remaining plants — Brier Hill and the Indiana works — were sold to Jones & Laughlin Steel, later absorbed by LTV. 'You take away a man's job, you take away everything,' the union leader Gerard Dickey said. His verdict on the owner was shorter: 'Lykes drained us dry.'