The steel giant detailed its redundancy plan at an extraordinary CSE meeting on Wednesday April 30, 2025, with 385 potential redundancies at seven French sites, including 113 at Florange and 162 at Dunkirk.
The ArcelorMittal group, formerly the world’s number one steelmaker, presented details of its downsizing plan in France to trade unions on Wednesday. It’s a plan that’s causing teeth to grind, at a time when the group’s financial indicators are in the green.
Florange and Dunkirk particularly hard hit
The Florange site in Moselle would lose 194 jobs, including 113 that would be eliminated. The packaging sector (cold-rolled sheet for packaging) is the hardest hit, with 30 job cuts announced. Even the lines dedicated to sheet metal for the automotive industry, considered to be the spearhead of ArcelorMittal’s business in Moselle, have not been spared, with 12 job losses.
The Dunkirk plant, meanwhile, is paying the heaviest price, with 295 job losses and 162 employees likely to be made redundant. In all, across the seven sites concerned, 636 jobs could be lost and 385 potential redundancies feared in France.
Financial results contradict the need for a redundancy plan
“The unions have been fuming ever since the plan was announced. And with good reason: despite the crisis cited by management, ArcelorMittal is in remarkable financial health. Debt levels are at an all-time low, margins remain comfortable and the group continues to buy back its own shares.
Flat products prices may have fallen in 2024, but they remain at high levels (around 778 euros per tonne), higher than before the pandemic. What’s more, the Group’s total production has even risen, from 55.3 million tonnes in 2023 to 57.9 million in 2024.
France, the main victim of the Group’s strategy
France is suffering the biggest decline in European steel production, with a 26% drop and 3.7 million tonnes less than in 2019. The Florange CGT, through its General Secretary Lionel Burriello, is calling for “an immediate halt to this PSE before it destroys even more jobs, lives and the whole balance of the valley”.
The unions also denounce the paradoxical strategy of the group, which complains about imports into Europe while organizing them itself via its joint ventures abroad, notably in India and the United States. According to the documents, these joint ventures account for 11% of the Group’s EBITDA.
ArcelorMittal | @ljacobelli (RN) accuse le Gvt de “crime avec préméditation contre notre sidérurgie” : “Vous avez étouffé la production française sous un déluge de normes absurdes !”
Il lui demande quelles actions il mènera pour “sauver la sidérurgie française.”#DirectAN #QAG pic.twitter.com/K4eq5rA9ol— Assemblée nationale (@AssembleeNat) April 30, 2025
« Si ArcelorMittal tombe, c’est l’ensemble de l’industrie du nord qui va tomber » : pourquoi il faut nationaliser les hauts-fourneaux
La CGT appelle, le 1er mai, à la mobilisation pour contrer les suppressions d’emploi annoncées par ArcelorMittal
➡️ https://t.co/FvgmFGaCKp pic.twitter.com/mHP18UCyue
— L’Humanité (@humanite_fr) April 30, 2025
