Hollande defends Mittal deal as unions seethe

French President says he will personally guarantee that ArcelorMittal stands by its commitment of keeping jobs at troubled plant

French President Francois Hollande said he would personally guarantee that steel multinational ArcelorMittal stood by a commitment to keep jobs at a plant threatened with closure as angry trade unionists threatened strike action. "I can say here that these commitments will be kept and that I, with the government, will be their guarantee," Hollande said on the sidelines of a visit to the homeless, on Thursday.

The French government and the steelmaker had been waging high-stakes brinkmanship for weeks over the fate of two blast furnaces at a plant in Florange in northeastern France that ArcelorMittal said were no longer viable.

Last Friday Prime Minister Jean Marc Ayrault announced an eleventh-hour deal in which ArcelorMittal would close the furnaces but keep the 600 jobs and invest at least euro 180 million ($234 million) over five years at the plant.

But Ayrault has struggled since to convince that the deal will prove effective and that Indian-born tycoon Lakshmi Mittal would keep to his word. Whatever trust was left between the furnace workers and ArcelorMittal dwindled further yesterday when the group announced it would not participate in a project to develop carbon capture technology at the site.

Announcing the deal Friday, Ayrault had said the two blast furnaces would be left intact until EU financing was confirmed for an existing carbon-capture project at the site. But ArcelorMittal said it was pulling out of the EU funded project due to technical difficulties.

Angered by the announcement, yesterday, workers from the CFDT union that has spearheaded action against ArcelorMittal said they would occupy the blast furnaces at the heart of the row. "No one will touch the gas valves," said union leader Edouard Martin, in a pledge to keep the blast furnaces operational.

Other ArcelorMittal workers at a site in Fos-Sur-Mer meanwhile blocked entry to trucks in an act of solidarity with their colleagues at Florange. A third site in Western France is also under threat of strike action. Hollande said he understood "the worries, the doubts" and their causes. "But my responsibility is to make sure there is a future for Florange and all the commitments that have been given are held," he said.

In the run up to the deal, the French government had threatened to nationalise the Florange site, sparking indignation in business circles.