Arcelor Mittal to Initiate Layoffs at Contrecoeur
04/09/2009 - The United Steelworkers reports that Arcelor Mittal has sent Canada’s Minister of Labour a mass layoff notice affecting 190 workers at their Contrecoeur location.
The United Steelworkers reports that Arcelor Mittal has just sent Canada’s Minister of Labour a mass layoff notice affecting 190 workers at their Contrecoeur location.
The company will temporarily close down operations at the Contrecoeur mill for an indeterminate period of time beginning April 18. The continuous casting sector is also to be closed down on June 27.
"This is really bad news coming after the layoff of 450 workers when both the hot mill operations and the cold mill operations were shut down in 2008,” said Pierre Arseneau, union representative for United Steelworkers (FTQ). “We requested an emergency meeting with the employer to determine measures that could minimize the impact of these layoffs.”
Claude Langlois, President of Local Section Locale 6586 commented that this decision does not bode well for the future, noting "when the company closed its rolling mills in March 2008 and transferred production to Dofasco, there was a question of keeping long products such as billets and wire rod in Québec. We kept continuous casting to continue to supply Dofasco's production. There are currently no orders for the third quarter.
“In terms of the processing plant,” continued Langlois, “we learned that the company has a huge inventory of pellets in its Trinidad-and-Tobago plant. So it wants to take those pellets and send them directly to our steel mill in Contrecoeur without going through our processing plant. What's going to happen in the medium term? We don't yet have a re-opening date.”
Both union leaders expressed disappointment that the company—which had previously said it would build a steel beam mill that would offset the layoffs caused by the shutdown of the rolling mills—is announcing further layoffs instead.
ArcelorMittal’s Contrecoeur location employs some 825 people, of which 590 are members of the United Steelworkers.
