2023-04-22 04:15:00
The steel company ArcelorMittal will face a critical week to avoid conflict at its Asturian facilities. The CC OO union section ratified yesterday the solo call for the first 24-hour strike for Monday, with a call for the concentration of workers at the gates of the Avilés and Gijón factories to demand that the management approach the demands unions in the eighth framework agreement, including the collective agreement, and that affects the entire workforce of the multinational in Spain.
On the contrary, the labor committees of the Avilés and Gijón factories and the Aboño coal park decided yesterday by majority to give the company a margin of seven days and maintain their own calendar, with strikes called on the 13th of the month of May if before the end of next week there is no understanding.
The three labor committees of Asturias indicated yesterday that “the negotiations of the eighth framework agreement are not considered broken” and that, only in the event that April ends without an agreement, the calendar of two-hour strikes will be launched in various shifts to from the 2nd and until the 25th of May.
Unlike what happened in the plants in Asturias, where only the CC OO calls for a strike the day after tomorrow, in Sagunto the works council approved, with the unanimous support of the union sections of the CC OO, UGT, CGT and Association of Managers, a four-hour stoppage in each of the three work shifts this Monday. The decision was ratified by the workers’ assembly.
If it enters an upward spiral, the conflict comes at a very delicate moment, when a decision by the multinational is still pending on the investment of more than 1,000 million euros for the partial decarbonization of the Gijón factory, the first step in future actions. to guarantee a steel process without CO2 emissions. The large investment in the decarbonisation of the manufacturing process is a condition for the plants to be able to avoid the high and perhaps dissuasive cost that producing steel in Europe will entail once the European Union has determined the progressive suppression from 2026 of the free emission rights received by carbon-intensive companies and at risk of factory relocation. Free credits will disappear in the EU in 2034.
In turn, the tension between workers and the company occurs when one of the blast furnaces in Asturias is stopped and awaiting repair.
The company and unions unanimously reached an agreement on Tuesday on specific labor issues at the Asturias plants, but this agreement is conditional on there also being an understanding in the framework agreement and collective agreement for all the Spanish facilities. The day before yesterday, and after a year of negotiations, the company improved its proposal, but it was judged as “insufficient” by all the unions, although the UGT appreciated the management’s movement “positively”.
The burned blast furnace will not be fully expedited until May
ArcelorMittal’s blast furnace A in Gijón, which caught fire on March 22, will hardly be able to reopen in May and perhaps not this semester either. The cleaning tasks to access its interior persist and will continue for at least another week and a half, which will mean entering the month of May without having expedited the installation. On the 11th, the company reached an agreement with CC OO, UGT and USO by which a temporary employment regulation file (ERTE) was approved due to force majeure that will last six months (between April 1 and December 1). October), although modular depending on how long the repair lasts. The ERTE, which has been approved by the labor authority, will affect a maximum of 5,700 workers in the Asturias plants and in those others dependent on the Avilés and Gijón steel mills out of the 7,000 employees that make up the workforce.
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