David H. Lohr meets employees' representatives for occupational safety
Last Thursday, February 8th, U. S. Steel Kosice President David H. Lohr attended a working lunch with employees' representatives for occupational safety whose proposals for improvement were judged as the best during the second half of last year. The Company President thanked all those present for their performance in the area of occupational safety, and then spoke of his expectations for this year. "We're going to do all we can to see that we don't have any accidents," he stressed. "I am one hundred per cent convinced that it is possible to eliminate all dangers and prevent all accidents."
They've got their chance, now it's up to them how they use it
The project for employing people from disadvantaged social groups, which U. S. Steel Kosice is cooperating on with the village of Velka Ida as well as city wards Lunik IX and Kosice-Saca, is taking on a further new dimension. The young men who were recently enabled through the personnel leasing scheme to join the ranks of employees in the Power, Blast Furnaces and Cokery Divisions, expressed interest shortly after starting work at the factory in acquiring new knowledge and skills in the steelmaking profession. On Tuesday, January 30th, sixteen of them sat down for the first time behind desks at the Metallurgical Vocational School in Saca to join in a course on metallurgical plant.
Subsidiary Reliningserv with good results last year
The management of USSK subsidiary Reliningserv, s.r.o. Kosice is happy with last year's results. They finished 2006 with the figures they had planned and forecast. In the words of General Manager Jozef Verespej, however, that rather terse statement hides a great deal of work. He sees particular success, among other things, in their managing to establish themselves at U. S. Steel Serbia.
Blast furnaces pumping station renovated during full-scale operation
USSK's three blast furnaces depend for their working "lives" on thousands of cubic meters of water every day. Supplying sufficient water of the required quality is the responsibility of the Power workers, who keep the pumping station running in the vicinity of the blast furnaces. The station's "soul" are its cooling towers and pumping technology. Not long ago the decision was made to renovate and modernize these parts, and the renovation project itself began in February 2006. During the course of the year two more cooling towers were added, as well as new high-pressure feed piping for the cooling water going to the furnaces, and new return piping. All the pumps have also beeen overhauled. At the moment work is being concentrated on general overhaul of the high-pressure feed piping, which is expected to take until the end of April this year.
Ice-hockey hat-trick for Management
The hegemony of U. S. Steel Kosice's best ice-hockey team continues unabated. This means the players of the Management squad, who have become Company champions for the third time in a row, winning that title in 2005, 2006 and again now in 2007, and in doing so also the coveted trophy - the Company President's Cup. In the final match this time they took the closest of victories to beat the Steel Plant team 3:2. For the Steelmakers that means they have followed up last year's bronze medal by winning silver this year. In the match for third place the players of the joint CSM & Finishing team got the upper hand, also maintaining a single goal difference to beat one of the tournament's biggest favorites and last year's other finalists, the Blast Furnaces team, by 5 goals to 4.
