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4 February, 2003Steel group is cutting back its production and freezing investments.
BELGIUM: The trade unions represented at the Arcelor Cockerill-Sambre plant in Liège have called for a 24-hour strike to begin on February 6 at 9 p.m. The FGTB Metal and the Christian Metalworkers CCMB, both of which are affiliated to the IMF, say their walkout is in protest at the decision by the steelmaker to freeze investment at the plant.
This will be the first in a series of strikes being planned since the January 24 announcement by the steel group of restructuring plans which would see a freeze on investment at four of its European blast furnaces and a decrease in steel-producing capacity of 8 million metric tons by 2010.
Arcelor, the world's largest steelmaking group, was formed in 2002 with the merger of Luxembourg's Arbed, Spain's Aceralia and France's Usinor. It has a workforce of 106,000 worldwide and a production in 2002 of approximately 44 million metric tons of steel.