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For Poland Mittal is white knight

Three years after greeting the Mittal group, owned by Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, with suspicion and fear when it bought up Poland's four biggest steelworks, polish trade unions have been won over by the company and hail it as their industry's white knight.

"Mittal is not what we feared, even if relations were difficult at first," said Wladyslaw Kielian, President of the Solidarity Trade Union at Mittal's steelworks in the southern polish city of Krakow.

"We heard that Mittal was going to make people redundant and do everything to get rid of the biggest number of employees possible," Kielian said. But rather than realise those fears, Mittal has pumped huge amounts of cash into the polish venture, said Kielian. "Before privatisation, the polish steelworks stood on the edge of a financial precipice. Without a strategic investor, they were headed straight for bankruptcy." in 2004, Mittal bought Poland's four biggest steelworks, which produce 70.0 per cent of the nation's steel, from the state.

Mittal recapitalised the polish steelworks, took on their debts, and promised to plough more than 600 million euros into them by 2009. ND after several months of negotiations with unions, Mittal promised not to make a single worker redundant against his will until 2009.

At the same time the company announced pay rises and a "privatisation bonus" of up to 3,000 zlotys (790 Euros) per person.

(www.financialexpress.com)

 

 
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