From today’s Hibbing Daily Tribune online.

Cliffs idling three ore furnaces in Minnesota
Lay-offs loom

Tuesday, October 28, 2008
HDT Staff Report

CLEVELAND — Cliffs Natural Resources Inc., said in a written statement that it will temporarily idle three iron ore pellet furnaces in Minnesota, cutting 300,000 tons of monthly production capacity as demand for steel softens. The Cleveland company said “workforce adjustments” would be necessary but did not elaborate.

Cliffs Natural Resources, formerly Cleveland-Cliffs, is the largest producer of iron ore pellets in North America and a supplier of metallurgical coal to the global steelmaking industry.

Cliffs operates three mines on the Iron Range of northern Minnesota, including Hibbing Taconite, United Taconite (Eveleth) and Northshore. This report didn’t say which mines would be affected by the production cuts, but I’d bet all three are affected somehow. Other mines are not yet cutting production, but likely will after the last few weeks of steel price drops.

It was beginning to look like the global steel boom was fading in the cloud of what might be an international recession. I guess I’m surprised the production cuts on the Range happened so quickly. This sort of thing actually is pretty normal around here, but it takes a bite out of the economic momentum that had been building on the Iron Range. Keep your eyes on steel prices and corporate activities.

Meantime, Iron Range voters would be well advised to take a look at who wants to guarantee pensions and health care benefits before voting next Tuesday.

UPDATE: The Mesabi Daily News got more information: 2 furnaces at Northshore and 1 at United Taconite. I’d be shocked if Hibbing Taconite didn’t end up slowing down by year’s end, too.

Furthermore, the Al Franken campaign has a press release out on this topic today talking about jobs and pension security.

Al Franken:

“Eight years of failed economic policies and the market meltdown that is a direct result of those failures are taking a heavy toll on our manufacturing sector and our middle-class families. The workers up at Cliffs put in hard hours and did nothing wrong to cause this meltdown – but now, unfortunately, it looks like they and their families may pay a steep price.

“We just aren’t building things anymore, and we have to turn that around. When I get to Washington, I’ll work with Senator Klobuchar and Chairman Oberstar on a new economic stimulus package to get our economy moving again and get those plants producing again. And I’ll fight hard to make sure we protect jobs and pensions during this crisis.”