Lakshmi Mittal, chief executive of Arcelor Mittal, has come under scathing attack in French press for alleged Asian despotism.
LONDON: NRI steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, chief executive and president of Arcelor Mittal, has come under scathing attack in French press for what they alleged 'imposing an Asian despotism on his European steel workers'.
Mittal is accused of tearing up the French 'social model', shoving aside Arcelor's veterans and purging every last Frenchman from the combined Arcelor Mittal board, The Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday.
Top staff are said to be leaving after being offended as their counsel counts for nothing in 'a regime ruled capriciously by decree', it said.
Mittal has taken tight control of the 330,000-strong company, the world's number one steel group, with 10 per cent of global output in 60 countries.
By replacing a hapless Luxembourger as chief executive within four months of his conquest, he is accused of breaching the spirit, if not the letter, of the memorandum of
understanding, in which he agreed to take a back seat.
"The promised 'merger of equals' has become a sick joke," says le Canard Enchaine magazine, while research and IT operations are already being moved, as feared, from Europe to Brazil and Dubai.
French workers, however, are far from hostile to Mittal. "I am amazed to say it, but Mittal has given us hope," said Edouard Martin, a union chief at the CFDT labour federation in Florange.
In the Valle de la Fensch, where mills supply Peugeot, Volkswagen, Mercedes and Toyota - the most demanding, say the workers - with flat steel, the 4,000 employees were already on death watch before the Mittal takeover.
The mills were to be run down over the next three years, more or less ending Lorraine's 200-year role as the hub of Franco-European steel production and the strategic prize of
both the Franco-Prussian War and First World War.
"It is a monumental error to close these plants, but we couldn't stop it. The first thing Mittal did was to take a fresh look," said Martin.
"Everybody here knows that he took over a mill down the road that was about to be closed and it's still going seven years later," he said.
"He hasn't turned it into a hell-hole, the workers haven't lost their social rights, so we don't believe these scare stories."
"The man is obviously brilliant. But there is a feeling that we're all working just to make him richer," Martin said.
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