EAST CHICAGO | While United Steelworkers members of the region's largest steel mills await ratification of labor agreements, those at Indiana Harbor Coke Co. still await a contract.

United Steelworkers Amalgamated Local 1010 represents about 105 workers at the Sun Coke Energy Inc.-owned plant that supplies coke to ArcelorMittal's Indiana Harbor mill. Coke is superheated coal -- one of the main ingredients for making liquid iron in a blast furnace.

Signed in February 2006, the USW/Indiana Harbor Coke labor agreement expired Monday. The Sun Coke agreement has been extended until a new agreement is reached, Tom Hargrove, president of USW Local 1010, said Wednesday.

"We're down to a few local issues and working on it," he said.

Company spokesman Thomas Golembeski said the negotiations are "down to a few remaining, small issues."

"We will continue to negotiate in good faith to reach an agreement that benefits both sides," he said Wednesday.

ArcelorMittal's union contract, which was approved in December 2005, also has been extended until workers vote to ratify the tentative agreement reached between the company and USW Saturday. No date for the vote has been set, but it should occur within the next few weeks, said USW District 7 Director Jim Robinson.

Under the current labor agreement between Sun Coke and the union, workers receive pension and benefits that were negotiated when the coke plant was owned by Inland, Hargrove said.

Indiana Harbor Coke began producing coke in 1998, a year after Sun Coal and Coke Co., of Knoxville, Tenn., began construction on property owned by Inland Steel Co.

Sun Coal, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sunoco Inc., built the plant after it reached an agreement with Inland that the steel maker would buy 1.2 million tons of coke annually on a "take or pay" basis for 15 years.