France Reaches Deal to Save 600 Jobs at Steel Plant
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — The French government reached an agreement late Friday with the steel giant ArcelorMittal that commits the company to investing 180 million euros ($233 million) over five years in one of its three largest French factories and avoids the elimination of about 600 jobs. The deal, announced by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, ends a tense, two-month standoff that escalated this week with the threat of a possible nationalization of the plant. In a televised announcement, Mr. Ayrault said that while ArcelorMittal had agreed “unconditionally” to keep all 2,700 employees at its site in Florange, in northeastern France, two idled blast furnaces — at which 600 of those people worked — would remain offline until flagging European steel demand improved. Workers will be redeployed to other areas of the plant, he said, and there will be no layoffs. “The government has decided against the idea of a temporary nationalization,” Mr. Ayrault said. Nicola Davidson, a spokeswoman for ArcelorMittal, confirmed that an agreement had been reached but declined to discuss the details before a formal announcement on Saturday. The accord appeared to end the ugly dispute, which had pitted the French state, in its traditional role as defender of industry, against a company with mounting debts that was trying to reduce capacity in response to the economic slowdown in Europe. ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel maker, had sought to close the two blast furnaces at the Florange plant permanently but wanted to continue operating a part of the facility that processes steel for the car industry. In all, ArcelorMittal employs about 20,000 people in France. With unemployment hovering above 10 percent, the Socialist government of President François Hollande is desperate to avoid more layoffs by name-brand companies. Several big employers, including PSA Peugeot Citroën, Air France and Sanofi, have announced significant job cuts this year. But some analysts said that by taking such a strongly interventionist stance to protect steelworkers, France risked sending the wrong signal to multinational companies, whose investment the economy needs if it is to stave off long-term decline. ArcelorMittal had agreed to give the government until midnight Friday to find a buyer for the furnaces, offering them for a symbolic single euro, despite skepticism that a buyer would be interested in anything less than the entire factory. Arnaud Montebourg, France’s industry minister, had previously insisted that the company agree to sell the whole plant and said that two companies were interested, although he declined to identify them. It was Mr. Montebourg who first raised the possibility of a “temporary nationalization” of the Florange plant in a newspaper interview published this week. In the interview, the minister accused Lakshmi N. Mittal, the Indian-born billionaire who serves as the company’s chairman and chief executive, of “failing to respect France.” Mr. Mittal, who built ArcelorMittal from the 2006 merger of his Mittal Steel with Arcelor, then the largest European steel maker, had promised at the time to help modernize the European steel sector. But the company said the Florange plant was already scheduled to close under Arcelor, its previous owner. <NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Stanley Reed contributed reporting from London. |