United States Steel Corporation Great Lakes Works will receive a $160,000 Economic Development Job Training grant to upgrade the skills of 800 current employees at their Ecorse and River Rouge plants. The funding, provided by the Michigan Economic Development Corp., will equip workers with state-of-the-art training in various manufacturing processes including maintenance and trades skills.

Under the terms of the award, Henry Ford Community College will be the grant administrator and U. S. Steel will provide a minimum 30 percent funding match.

“The Economic Development Job Training grant will provide our employees significant opportunities to advance their education and on-the-job skills,” U. S. Steel Great Lakes Works General Manager Frederick Jauss said. “Against the backdrop of the intensely competitive global marketplace in which we operate, this grant will help our employees secure the skills they need to help U. S. Steel remain a world-class, world-competitive steelmaker.”

U. S. Steel manufactures a wide variety of steel sheet, tubular and tin products, coke, and taconite pellets, and has a worldwide annual raw steel capability of 26.8 million net tons.

Headquartered in Pittsburgh, U. S. Steel has domestic facilities in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and international operations in the Slovak Republic and Serbia. Great Lakes Works employs approximately 2,350.

Since 1994, more than $325 million in EDJT grants have helped over half a million Michigan workers improve their skills and enhance the competitiveness of their employers.