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Final Wednesday, the Vallourec metal pipe producer introduced what 1000’s of its staff had lengthy feared. The multinational, which produces seamless tubes primarily for the gasoline and oil trade, is closing its crops in Düsseldorf-Rath and Mülheim/Ruhr, destroying about 2,400 jobs at these two websites alone.
Manufacturing of seamless pipes in Western Europe is to be halted utterly. About 1,650 staff are affected in Düsseldorf and 750 in Mülheim. As well as, the closings will hit the numerous workers in subcontracting companies.
The 2 crops being closed in Germany used to belong to the Mannesmannröhren-Werke, which has an extended historical past. The Düsseldorf plant within the Rath district has existed since 1899, whereas the Mülheim plant has existed since 1966 and is the second largest industrial employer within the metropolis after the Siemens Vitality plant.
The Mannesmann Group was taken over and damaged up by Vodafone in 2000. A cooperation between the tube works and Vallourec has existed since 1997, when the three way partnership Vallourec & Mannesmann Tubes (V&M Tubes) was shaped. In 2005, Vallourec acquired the Mannesmann shares. In 2013, the German company unit grew to become Vallourec Deutschland GmbH.
Vallourec is a basic multinational. The company owns 50 manufacturing amenities in over 20 international locations with 20,000 workers; its headquarters are in France.
The closure of the factories and the destruction of many 1000’s extra jobs in subcontracting companies are a part of a worldwide rationalisation programme, as is at the moment being ready and applied in lots of companies. World companies are reacting to the worldwide financial disaster and the rising competitors on the world market by reducing labour prices or relocating manufacturing to low-wage international locations with the bottom social requirements.
Within the course of, the worldwide banks and massive traders set the tone. Manufacturing is trimmed for revenue and rising shareholder worth. The pandemic and NATO’s proxy battle in opposition to Russia function a pretext for a frontal assault on the rights and dwelling circumstances of staff, who’re paying with job losses and inflation for enormous rearmament spending, battle and the big enrichment of the firms and the super-rich.
The commerce unions don’t have anything to counter this assault besides feigned indignation and toothless protests. They act as accomplices of company administration and supply them “different rationalisation programmes.” They need to show that, with their assist, exploitation may also be drastically intensified on the house soil.
This may be seen all too clearly within the case of Vallourec. The closure of factories in Germany additionally means the closure of the plant in Saint-Saulve in northern France, with 100 jobs, the place the tubes produced in Düsseldorf and Mülheim are reworked. Ten years in the past, there have been 1,000 jobs there, which have been regularly lower with the assistance of the commerce unions, using the standard salami techniques.
One of many group’s websites, in Bellshill, Scotland, with 70 jobs, may even be closed. Manufacturing there’s to be moved to Aulnoye in France, given that the corporate is then worthwhile and that applicable gross sales markets are developed. Secondly, the corporate desires to introduce “additive manufacturing” and set up robots to provide metal elements in small batches or, as with 3D printers, on a customized foundation.
In accordance with the French press, Vallourec additionally desires to rationalise its analysis and growth division by merging it into one website in Aulnoye, reducing 100 jobs. About 60 different jobs are to be lower on the group’s headquarters close to Paris. In complete, 300 jobs will go in France as a part of a plan to “safeguard employment.”
Worldwide, 2,950 jobs can be misplaced due to the measures now determined by the Vallourec board, primarily in Europe. The variety of workers will drop from 17,000 to 14,000. In France, about 1,300 jobs will stay at Vallourec.
On the similar time, the corporate is constructing a brand new manufacturing facility in Brazil to produce markets within the Center East and a plant in Ohio within the US to produce drilling websites for the extraction of shale oil and gasoline (fracking) within the North American market.
Staff on the Vallourec crops have been involved about their jobs and livelihoods for months. In November final 12 months, administration had introduced the sale of the tube crops in Mülheim and Düsseldorf, which had collected losses of €700 million since 2015. Some monetary traders had confirmed curiosity within the crops however didn’t need to pay something for them. As a substitute, they demanded sums working into a whole lot of thousands and thousands of euros for the takeover, for instance, for firm pensions and different firm commitments.
Vallourec CEO Philippe Guillemot justified the closures by saying that they had not discovered a purchaser for the crops with a sustainable plan; to keep away from additional losses, they due to this fact needed to be closed. He claimed that websites in Western Europe have been not worthwhile within the face of competitors from Japanese European international locations with a lot decrease wage and manufacturing prices within the manufacture of pipes for the Center East or different areas.
The position of the IG Metall union
Simply two days earlier than the closure was introduced, IG Metall organised a convoy of a few thousand staff from Germany to Paris to protest in entrance of Vallourec headquarters.
As a substitute of organising joint motion with French staff who’re additionally dropping their jobs, IG Metall officers delivered pathetic funeral speeches and bemoaned the house owners’ revenue lust and the king-of-the-castle stance of the decision-makers, with whom they intently collaborate. The union bureaucrats’ cowardly prattle is designed to unfold hopelessness and demoralisation.
The globalisation of manufacturing and the systematic division and blackmail of the employees means the commerce union coverage of “social partnership” (i.e., collaborating with the employers) is proving utterly bankrupt. To stop the relocation of manufacturing, the works councils and commerce union officers attempt to undercut the acute exploitation within the low-wage international locations by proposing their very own rationalisation measures and social cuts. On this means, they set in movement a downward spiral wherein the firms and their shareholders earn handsomely.
At Vallourec, too, IG Metall and the works council had actively supported the downsizing plans from the beginning. They even commissioned a consultancy agency to attract up their very own continuation idea for the crops, which they introduced as an alternative choice to the sale deliberate by administration. In accordance with this idea, manufacturing on the German crops was to be oriented in direction of future markets round hydrogen, geothermal vitality, offshore wind crops and photo voltaic know-how.
This idea, which was additionally supported by the German administration, as Labour Director Herbert Schaaff informed the WAZ, nonetheless envisaged the elimination of 700 to 800 jobs, whereas on the similar time rising turnover by 10 p.c inside the subsequent 5 years!
The whining of the works councils, that “even this plan is now wastepaper,” is pure hogwash. It merely served as a stalling tactic to forestall a struggle for the unconditional preservation of jobs. That is identified from quite a few comparable instances prior to now. The Opel crops in Bochum, which at their peak employed 20,000 staff, have been shut down in an identical step-by-step technique with the collaboration of IG Metall.
Anger boiled over at a works assembly of each crops held on Friday within the ISS Dome in Düsseldorf. The Vallourec administration, which had travelled from Paris to justify the closure choice, was greeted with a sustained shrill refrain of whistles; the CEO’s speech was consistently interrupted by boos and heckling. Lastly, the occasion was deserted, and the administration left the corridor via the again exit below police safety.
“In the mean time, it’s utterly unclear how manufacturing will proceed on the two websites till the top of subsequent 12 months on this emotionally charged scenario,” commented broadcaster WDR. “It appears potential that there can be a strike.”
Industrial motion—a strike or occupation of the crops—is certainly the one option to defend jobs. However that requires a whole break with IG Metall and its works council representatives. Even when they really feel pressured to organise just a few extra symbolic protests, they’ll do every little thing to stifle any critical struggle.
The Ruhr space—from Dortmund (Hoesch) to Bochum (Opel) to Duisburg-Rheinhausen (Krupp)—is stuffed with industrial ruins the place tens of 1000’s as soon as labored. Many had fought bitterly to defend their jobs, however the IG Metall and its works council representatives sabotaged staff’ resistance every time.
For this they have been handsomely rewarded. Essentially the most well-known case is that of Oliver Burkhard, who headed the IG Metall district of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2007 to 2013 earlier than shifting to the board of steelmakers thyssenkrupp as personnel director on a wage of thousands and thousands. Since Might 1 this 12 months, Burkhard has had one other job: he stays a board member of thyssenkrupp and moreover now heads the defence firm thyssenkrupp Marine Programs, Europe’s main techniques provider for submarines and naval vessels, as CEO.
Whereas staff have been raging with anger, all that might be heard from union officers and politicians was the standard demoralised whining. The director of IG Metall Düsseldorf-Neuss, Karsten Kaus, informed dpa that that they had tried every little thing to observe the gross sales course of. A continuation idea had additionally been developed with the works council and a consulting agency. “In the long run, none of this got here to fruition.”
The IG Metall secretary in Mülheim, Dirk Horstkamp, informed WAZ: “There’s plenty of consternation right here. It’s actually exhausting how Vallourec treats the folks right here,” he mentioned, and the workforce had put every little thing on the road.
Staff should reject this cowardly discuss with contempt. It’s vital to interrupt out of the straitjacket of the commerce unions and organise independently of IG Metall and the works councils in rank-and-file motion committees. The primary process of those motion committees is to make contact with colleagues in France, Scotland and different international locations to organise joint industrial motion to defend all jobs unconditionally.
The closure and retrenchment plans of Vallourec and the unions should not be accepted. The pursuits and desires of the employees should come earlier than the corporate’s drive for income.
To wage this battle, it’s vital to construct the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP, Socialist Equality Social gathering) and organise this battle based mostly on a global socialist programme. Get in contact with the SGP! It helps the constructing of unbiased motion committees and helps to make worldwide contact with staff in different international locations and different factories additionally affected by closure. Ship a WhatsApp message to: +491633378340.
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