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Vallourec employees fear job cuts
Steel tubes are made up to 1300 degrees in the United States Vallourec factory in Rath.
Photo: Anne Orthen
The company plans a realignment of the Rath and Reisholz factories. The business committee fears that it costs hundreds of jobs.
In Düsseldorf factories of the traditional Vallourec steel group (formerly Mannesmann), workers' representatives are confronted with painful cuts. The French parent company had announced, in the face of failing sales markets, "large-scale capacity adjustments", but not yet called specific figures on the resulting job cuts, said the company. IG Metall.
According to the enterprise committee, the production of the Reisholzer plant should be reduced by about 50% by the end of 2019, and from until 60% in Rath – only one quarter would be needed in both places. For Rath alone, the company committee expects these requirements to mean that up to 400 jobs could be eliminated, currently about 2,000 people are working there. There are 500 employees working in Reisholz – the head of the company committee, Ayhan Üstün, does not want to speculate how many of them could cost the plans. Between the lines, however, he reads for himself so that – even if the specifications are not respected – even the plant closures could threaten
The company confirmed Thursday to have begun discussions with employee representatives, the object of a "reorientation of the factories Reisholz and Rath" being: "The goal is d & # 39; Use a plan of action, the competitiveness of the work and to ensure their future, "he said. They want to exploit the potential synergies between the plants, while keeping the impact on the workforce as low as possible. But we are still at the beginning of the process and will develop the action plan in the coming weeks in "intensive dialogue" with employee representatives. "Until now, we do not know anything specific," says Karl-Heinz Schmidt, Vallourec's factory company manager. Rath. On August 3, according to his statements, a conversation with the director of labor will take place. The union and the company committee have already informed hundreds of employees of the Rath plant on Thursday. The first reactions ranged from horror to misunderstanding, which is currently also prevalent among employee representatives. Thus, last year, according to the company, "the most powerful transverse rolling mill in the world" was set up in Rath, the volume of investment valued Vallourec up to 45 million euros. # 39; euros. "We have successfully completed the start-up phase, now we can really reap the benefits," says Karl-Heinz Schmidt. Instead, the group relies on the argument that the market continues to shrink in the conventional power plant sector.
IG Metall wants the company to react to development by exploiting new markets and innovating: "We could be very productive here," says Karsten, managing director of IG Metall in Düsseldorf. Kaus. At Vallourec, a significant reduction in jobs was started in 2016, still in progress. In all, around 1,000 jobs were to be lost at the sites in Düsseldorf and Mülheim, but without redundancies.
The French company Vallourec created a joint venture with Mannesmann in 1997 and took over most of it. In the mills of the former Mannesmann-Werke, seamless tubes are still produced today. The first seamless steel tube was developed in 1886 and became indispensable for the young chemical and automotive industry due to its high load capacity.
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