The new steel battle – Liberation

Many false promises have remained in the social history of France-like those made in Besançon in front of the workers of Lip, in Ris-Orangis for those of Lu-Danone or in Poissy facing the strikers of Talbot. In the heart of the Lorraine valley where many names end in « angel », ArcelorMittal employees have experienced several. First in February 2008, when Nicolas Sarkozy joined the maintenance of the Gandrange site « With or without mittal », then in 2012 with the unwitting promises of candidate François Hollande before The workers of the Florange site.

Here we are, this time on The highly symbolic ArcelorMittal site of Dunkirkflagship city of reindustrialisation declared by Emmanuel Macron. Because steel continues to arouse impetuous political reactions, checking many boxes of the moment – sovereignty, employment, national defense. Along with this national effort, we find Lakshmi Mittal, principal shareholder and over -indebted of the largest steel giant outside China, which now threatens to close all the factories that bear its name in Europe If governments do not intervene To avoid the dizzying fall in steel pricesmainly due to Chinese overproduction. Curiously, the same Mittal asked the same Europe not to intervene when it distributed to its shareholders, and therefore to itself, more than 30 billion annual dividends, or when it bet everything-catastrophically-on the drop in supply and the rise of demand in emerging countries.

In the midst of this shortly classic history of capitalism, there are the 62,000 employees that Mittal uses on the old continent, including more than 600 positions directly threatened in France. We met these workers while the PS intends to table a bill putting « Under guardianship » From the ArcelorMittal site to Dunkirk. The Minister of Industry, Marc Ferracci, estimated this Thursday that « The nationalization of ArcelorMittal today is not the right answer ». That’s good, it takes an excellent.