Valdeen Shears-Nep­tune

The Steel Work­ers Union (SWUTT) is not ac­cept­ing Arcelor­Mit­tal's claims that it was in­cur­ring loss­es since 2009, which sub­se­quent­ly led to the com­pa­ny be­ing forced to close its Point Lisas plant on Fri­day.

The union has la­belled the com­pa­ny's move as a "strate­gic" way to wash its hands of its oblig­a­tions to work­ers.

On­ly on Thurs­day, work­ers cel­e­brat­ed hav­ing won at the In­dus­tri­al Court, in a case against the com­pa­ny for lay­ing them off twice be­tween De­cem­ber 2015 and Feb­ru­ary this year.

Their short-lived ju­bi­la­tion turned to im­me­di­ate sor­row, af­ter they were in­formed that the com­pa­ny had in­curred a $1.3 bil­lion debt and could no longer con­tin­ue to op­er­ate. Over 700 work­ers had sud­den­ly lost their jobs.

Ac­cord­ing to SWUTT's vice-pres­i­dent, Ramku­mar Nar­i­nesingh, the com­pa­ny's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Robert Bel­lisle, in­di­cat­ed in a meet­ing on Fri­day that last De­cem­ber, the com­pa­ny had sent a pro­pos­al to the Gov­ern­ment of­fer­ing the plant for sale for $1.

"He did not say whether it was a TT or US dol­lar. It could have been a sin­gle dol­lar or a nom­i­nal fee, he did not elab­o­rate." This means that if Gov­ern­ment pur­chas­es the com­pa­ny, it will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly in­her­it the $1.3 bil­lion debt.

Nar­i­nesingh said when the liq­uida­tors take over, the com­pa­ny will no longer be ob­lig­at­ed to set­tle out­stand­ing pay­ments to peo­ple who would have won in court. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, mat­ters be­fore the courts will be deemed null and void.

He said what this coun­try was fac­ing was the ac­tions of a shrewd busi­ness­man and his ex­ec­u­tives.

Steel ty­coon Lak­sh­mi Mit­tal was once list­ed by Forbes as the third rich­est man in Britain, with a net worth of over $45 bil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to Nar­i­nesingh, the union be­lieves that Arcelor­Mit­tal's main cred­i­tor is Mit­tal him­self. Mit­tal, he added, mines iron ore and sells back to Arcelor­Mit­tal. Gov­ern­ment, he not­ed, has called on the com­pa­ny to pro­vide a list of their cred­i­tors, which they are not ob­lig­at­ed to do.

The union is now call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to step in, "and not diplo­mat­i­cal­ly," to pro­tect the rights of its cit­i­zens.

"Where were their aus­ter­i­ty plans? We just can­not see that a com­pa­ny with knowl­edge that it was head­ing in­to a bleak fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion would con­tin­ue wan­ton ex­pen­di­ture as it did in the years since 2009. This man (Mit­tal) bought this com­pa­ny for $70 mil­lion and in one year paid back that loan. He was record­ed as one of the rich­est men in Eng­land and just al­lowed the largest steel pro­duc­ing com­pa­ny in the world to suf­fer cash haem­or­rhages, while ex­ec­u­tives here re­placed their up­grad­ed ve­hi­cles an­nu­al­ly.

"They kept lav­ish Christ­mas par­ties for sev­er­al years now, af­ter 2009, rent­ed out en­tire venues and en­gaged top en­ter­tain­ment and the com­pa­ny was in debt? We, the union, as the so­cial part­ners, were nev­er told that. In fact we had the largest union set­tle­ment of 14 per cent and hefty up­grad­ed ben­e­fits in our last ne­go­ti­a­tions and all the while the com­pa­ny was in­cur­ring huge debts?" queried Nar­i­nesingh dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day.

He said there were just too many ways to have curbed ex­pen­di­ture if the com­pa­ny knew it was that strapped for cash and an­tic­i­pat­ing clo­sure.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there was the is­sue of fi­nal set­tle­ment of share pay­ments from af­ter the pe­ri­od 2008, which was made manda­to­ry dur­ing Mit­tal's buy-out years ago. He said work­ers had al­ready been paid $150,000 each for the pe­ri­od up to 2008 af­ter Mit­tal con­tin­ued to refuse to place the shares on the lo­cal open mar­ket, but agreed to pay the cash.

The pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, he stat­ed, is aware of dis­cus­sions to fi­nal­ly set­tle these pay­ments.

Nar­i­nesingh said they an­tic­i­pate that Mit­tal (Lakhs­mi) will al­low the com­pa­ny to be liq­ui­dat­ed and "wash his hands of all oblig­a­tions the com­pa­ny has to its lo­cal work­ers."

He al­so spec­u­lat­ed that Mit­tal would re­turn in the near fu­ture, re­pur­chase the com­pa­ny and re­turn to these shores un­der a dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny name, con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tions in some form or fash­ion.

Nar­i­nesingh queried, too, the val­u­a­tion of the com­pa­ny af­ter an au­dit by Price­wa­ter­house.

He said what they un­der­stood oc­curred was that the com­pa­ny was de­val­ued by its ex­ec­u­tives who stat­ed that its as­sets would have to be re­placed rather than re­paired.

Calls to the mo­bile of Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus yes­ter­day went unan­swered.

Calls to the mo­bile of the head of le­gal at Arcelor­Mit­tal Vi­jay­alak­sh­mi Jaigopal al­so went unan­swered.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, when reached on his cell­phone, said he will com­ment on the mat­ter next week.

Lak­sh­mi Mit­tal–STEEL TY­COON

Steel ty­coon Lak­sh­mi Mit­tal, once la­belled by Forbes as the third rich­est man in Britain, at­tempt­ed to buy out Arcelor in Lux­em­bourg in 2006 for $18.6 bil­lion pounds cash and shares. The of­fer was re­ject­ed by Arcelor's di­rec­tors as hos­tile. Arcelor, cre­at­ed in 2002 from a merg­er of French, Lux­em­bourg, Bel­gian and Span­ish steel in­ter­ests, warned against Mit­tal's "ir­reg­u­lar" prof­itabil­i­ty, pledg­ing to con­sid­er "all op­tions" to foil the hos­tile bid, ac­cord­ing to an NBC news re­port in 2006.

Two days lat­er, prime min­is­ter Jean-Claude Junck­er of Lux­em­bourg, which held 5.6 per cent share in Arcelor, vowed to use "all nec­es­sary means" to fend off Mit­tal's un­so­licit­ed of­fer.

Af­ter a cou­ple months of ne­go­ti­a­tions, Arcelor fi­nal­ly agreed to the merg­er for $33.5 bil­lion from Mit­tal.