Feb. 20--CINCINNATI -- More layoffs could be ahead for AK Steel Corp. employees.

Jim Wainscott, AK chairman, president and chief executive, said about 1,000 of the company's 6,500 employees are currently laid off and that number "will probably double before things get better." The U.S. steel industry in general is only operating at about 50 percent of its capacity, he told the Journal following his speech Thursday, Feb. 19, at Xavier University. As a result of the low demand, the local steelmaker has been aggressively reducing its costs, including temporarily idling plants and reducing salaried employee pay by 5 percent.

"It would be easier if I didn't have to make these decisions about idling plants and laying off people. But leadership is not about making easy or popular decisions. It's about making the right -- and frequently unpopular -- decisions," Wainscott said.

About 106 workers are currently laid off at Middletown Works, said Scott Rich, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local Lodge 1943.

The company will be taking advantage of the slow demand to do major maintenance on the Middletown Works blast furnace, including replacing the hearth. The blast furnace is used to make coke, a vital ingredient in steel-making. Wainscott estimated the cost would range "in the tens of millions" and will begin in March and extend into April.

The blast furnace at its plant in Ashland has restarted in preparation for the local shutdown.

Rich said the number of workers in Middletown who will be idled during the shutdown remains undetermined.

"This is a one in 25-year outage," he said.

While AK Steel will be increasing its supply of coke thanks to a new partnership with SunCoke Energy, there are no plans to take the local blast furnace offline permanently, Wainscott said.

AK Steel is the sole customer for the coke and electricity to be produced by the $340 million facility under construction off Yankee Road. It is slated to open within 14 to 18 months.

"The Middletown plant and the Middletown blast furnace are very important to our long-term strategy," he said. "Otherwise, we wouldn't be making an investment of this magnitude."

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