GRANITE CITY, Ill.—Granite City Mayor Mike Parkinson woke up Monday to a phone call from a U.S. Steel representative saying that the company had announced a $14.9 billion sale to Nippon Steel, a Japanese firm. 

U.S. Steel has been engaged in exploratory talks for some time with American firms, including rival Cleveland Cliffs. Parkinson thought a deal announcement was likely either Monday or Tuesday, but said he was shocked to find out it was Nippon which will maintain the U.S. Steel brand and Pittsburgh headquarters as a subsidiary.  

“Handing over the steel industry and the biggest portion of our steel manufacturing to a foreign company does raise some hairs on the back of my neck,” Parkinson said.  

“They could come in and say we want to get out of the whole process here in Granite and shut the whole thing down. We just don’t know. I don’t think that’s going to be the case. They may come in and say let’s fire this thing back up,” he added, referring to U.S. Steel’s decision earlier this fall to idle one of its blast furnaces. “We just don’t know. I don’t think that’s the case either.”

There are roughly 850 union steelworkers currently working at U.S. Steel’s Granite City Works. The company temporarily laid off 1,000 workers as part of the idling decision. 

United Steelworkers Local 1899 president Dan Simmons said he was disappointed by Monday’s announcement, in part because the union was unaware of talks with Nippon and had pushed for a deal with Cleveland Cliffs.

Nippon said Monday that it will honor all collective bargaining agreements in place with the United Steelworkers and other employees, and is committed to maintaining its relationship with workers. Nippon has had a presence in the U.S. for almost 40 years, starting with a joint venture with Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel in 1984 that later became a wholly owned subsidiary.

Simmons recalls Nippon’s partnership with the former National Steel in the 1990s as being positive, but told reporters at a Monday afternoon news conference that without knowing what Nippon’s business and operating plan are yet, there are concerns.

“We know what U.S. Steel’s Operation plan was for Granite City and it wasn’t positive and so myself and members I represent and this community was ready to embrace a new owner that would like this facility, what we got to offer, the workforce we have, and the kind of products we can make. We make grades of steel that nobody else in this country can make. U.S. Steel didn’t take advantage of that,” he said. 

Parkinson’s City Hall office is just a stone’s throw from the union hall where Simmons spoke. He would have attended, but he’s been busy fielding phone calls from media and working on a pitch to bring a new employer to town, one that would bring up to 600 manufacturing jobs. 

“We’re at a crossroads… Granite City and the United States in manufacturing. It seems like we’re just the poster child for what’s really going on across the country and we’re losing manufacturing jobs. It’s disheartening to me to sell to a foreign country. It’s disheartening to me to think that a lot of these good paying jobs for just hard-working Americans are going by the wayside,” Parkinson said. 

But he said U.S. Steel’s fate here isn’t just of concern to his city.

“It’s not something that everybody should just be focused on what’s going to happen to Granite City. These people live in Edwardsville. They live in Glen Carbon, they live in O’Fallon, they live in Troy. They live in all these other communities, they’re going to be affected as well,” he said.

“I don’t think that anything that happens with U.S. Steel will be the end of Granite City. I don’t think it’s going to be the nail in the coffin for this city. I think there’s a lot of widespread fear of that. I think that this town’s resilient. It always has been.”