Unions across the world are asking steelworkers to sign a petition calling for a crackdown on unfairly traded imports, which are widely blamed for depressed prices and layoffs worldwide.
"Steel-producing unions from across the world call for urgent action to protect our jobs and communities from the current wave of industrial destruction that is wiping out industrial jobs on a global scale and systematically eroding workers' rights and working conditions," the United Steelworkers and other steel unions from across the world wrote in the petition.
Signatories include unions in Australia, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Mexico and the United States.
The unions are asking governments to fight market distortions, such as by aggressively enforcing World Trade Organization dumping rules, toughening laws against subsidized imports and helping displaced workers. They also called for more collective bargaining, apprenticeship programs, infrastructure programs and targeted interventions in communities that would be "threatened with extinction" if the steel mills closed.
"We believe that the strongest sign of a fair society is the way in which workers and their unions are treated," the unions wrote.
Society needs steel, but governments around the world fail to recognize the steel industry's economic importance, the unions wrote.
"Steel is the world's second largest industry with a turnover of $900 billion," the unions wrote.
"It has been the foundation for the last 100 years of industrial progress, driving industrial and environmental innovations and technologies and supporting economic growth in many other industrial sectors. Global steel use is projected to increase by 50 percent by 2050."
Analysts say China has as an estimated 500 million tons of overcapacity and continues to crank out steel even as its economy slows. China exported more than 100 million tons of steel last year, which is close to what the United States could make if all its mills were running at full capacity. A flood of cheap Chinese steel has led steelmakers all over the world to dump their surplus steel abroad, sometimes for less than what it cost to make.