Around a hundred employees were mobilized at midday on Monday in front of the Reims site, upstream of the CSE, but that was not enough. ArcelorMittal has confirmed the closure of its service centers in Reims and Denain, which employ a total of 136 people, the unions announced following a social and economic committee (CSE) in Reims.
112 people are employed on the Reims site (Marne) and 24 on the Denain site (North), according to the unions, or almost a quarter of the total ArcelorMittal Service Centers workforce in France. “The cessation of production is planned for June,” added the inter-union in a press release. “For certain support functions, departures are planned from April,” she adds.
Nineteen reclassifications proposed
According to this source, 19 reclassifications will be proposed in other ArcelorMittal Service Centers sites. “Eight positions currently occupied by temporary staff will also be offered” within a site in Haute-Saône and “20 offers have been listed” for reclassifications within other entities of the group, the press release continues.
ArcelorMittal indicated last week that the Reims and Denain centers were suffering from a “sharp drop in activity” among its customers in industry and automobiles, “which has accelerated in recent months”.
Concern grows in Dunkirk
The inter-union calls on employees of the eight French sites of ArcelorMittal Service Centers to mobilize on Tuesday. In Denain, they must be joined by around fifty members of the CGT of ArcelorMittal Dunkirk, where concern is growing after announcements made in recent days by the group and the government.
ArcelorMittal asked the European Union on Monday to protect the competitiveness of European steel, putting in the balance its decarbonization projects on the continent, which involve several billion euros of investments. This notably includes Dunkirk, where ArcelorMittal has decided “to postpone its investment in the decarbonization of the site”, according to the Minister Delegate for Industry, Marc Ferracci.
ArcelorMittal employs “3,200 direct permanent workers in Dunkirk, between 8,000 and 9,000 including indirect jobs”, according to Gaëtan Lecocq, general secretary of the CGT at ArcelorMittal Dunkerque. Benoît Jean-Leroy, CFDT delegate of ArcelorMittal Reims, denounces ArcelorMittal's desire to “keep out of Europe in favor of the United States, India and Brazil”.
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