Massive job cuts at German steelmaker Thyssenkrupp: IG Metall union sides with management

On Thursday, steelworkers from Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe (TKSE) blocked the factory gates of the Hamborn/Beeckerwerth site in the north of Duisburg. At times, the main road was also blocked by forklifts, wheel loaders and benches, leading to major traffic jams and hours of delays, including in tram traffic.

IG Metall protests billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s entry into Thyssenkrupp Steel in April 2024

Also employees of Hüttenwerke Krupp-Mannesmann (HKM) from the south of the city took part in the protest action. The HKM factory is to be sold. The future of the remaining 3,000 employees is completely uncertain.

Production stops and protests also took place at several other Thyssenkrupp locations, for example in Hagen, Dortmund and Gelsenkirchen. The works council spoke of a massive “guerrilla action” in the fight against the planned job losses.

Two days earlier, the IG Metall union issued a dramatic appeal warning of the destruction of 10,000 jobs at Thyssenkrupp. Leaflets were distributed at all sites with the title “Only half a steel mill.” They claimed that the company’s CEO, Miguel López, was pursuing a “radical plan” and wanted to “halve the steel mill.”

The planned reduction in production at Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe from the current level of around 11 million tonnes to 5 million tonnes would have catastrophic consequences. “Several locations would have to close,” the works council and union said in the brochure. Thyssenkrupp operates steel mills not only in Duisburg, but also in Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Dortmund, Hagen, Siegen and Finnentrop, among other locations.

Thursday’s protest was also held under the slogan: “Someone has to stop López!” The speakers – representatives of the supervisory board, the works council, IG Metall and politicians from the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens who were present – all took aim at the CEO of the group as a whole, López, who allegedly “does not understand steel” and “endangers Germany as a steel-producing country.”

In contrast, the CEO of the steel division Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe (TKSE), Bernhard Osburg, was hailed as “the best CEO of steel we have ever had” and his “business plan” was applauded, despite the fact that it also envisaged the destruction of thousands of jobs and the closure of factories in close cooperation with the works council. Media reports quote the vice-chairman of the works council as saying: “We fully support Osburg.”

Many steelworkers are rightly very concerned about their jobs and the future of their families, and are looking for a way to organize real resistance to the planned job cuts.

But the protest actions by IG Metall and the works council on Thursday and similar actions during the Thyssenkrupp supervisory board meeting next week have nothing to do with a serious fight to defend jobs. On the contrary. They are part of a conspiracy in which representatives of the works council and IG Metall play a key role in implementing job cuts.

They sit on all management committees, on the supervisory board and on the economic committee of the company, are well informed about all plans, have often worked out the plans themselves, advise top management, at the same time organize protests to let off steam and use their extensive apparatus to suppress any serious struggle for the defense of jobs and social rights.

The main task for workers at Thyssenkrupp – and also for workers in the automotive and supply industries and other sectors – is to break the control of the corrupt union apparatus and mafia-like corporate structures and take the defense of jobs into their own hands.

This requires the creation of independent grassroots action committees that fight for the rights and interests of workers and put them above the profit interests of corporations and investors. And it requires an international strategy that coordinates and combines the growing resistance into a common international struggle.

At Thyssenkrupp, the establishment of a new, independent resistance organization is of great urgency.

At the end of April, company spokespeople had already announced the layoffs and the joining of Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky at Stahl AG. IG Metall immediately took to the barricades. It gathered several thousand steelworkers from all locations in front of the Thyssenkrupp steel administration building in the north of Duisburg and the company headquarters in Essen, where they had to listen to the cacophony organized by the apparatchiks of the works councils and IG Metall.

But the protest was not about stopping the planned destruction of the livelihoods of thousands of steelworkers and their families. It was about preserving the lucrative jobs of bureaucrats in the joint venture that would be created when Kretinsky’s company, EP Corporate Group (EPCG), acquired 50 percent of Thyssenkrupp Steel. The bureaucrats feared that the new company would be headquartered outside Germany, eliminating the legally regulated corruption known as “Montanmitbestimmung” (co-determination in the coal and steel industry).

The works council representatives and union members on the supervisory boards receive high salaries every year, up to six figures. For them, it only really starts to pay off when they rise to the position of chairman of the works council. Then many a union official becomes an income millionaire in no time. Markus Grolms (chief human resources officer) and Oliver Burkhard (CEO of Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems) are just two of them. That is why the officials and full-time works council members fight passionately when it comes to their own interests. The employees only serve them as leverage in their dispute with the group’s top management.

When an agreement was reached that stipulated the “transfer of the current codetermination arrangement of Thyssenkrupp AG to the new holding company,” the union and the works council agreed to the layoffs, but as usual demanded “no forced redundancies.”

In fact, since German reunification in 1990, half of all jobs in the German steel industry have been destroyed, a total of 90,000, without a single steelworker being “compulsorily” laid off. The rejection of “compulsory layoffs” is the modus operandi by which the union apparatuses destroy jobs in their “social partnership” with the companies. They have many other ways to drive workers out of the company.

Around 90,000 men and women still work in the steel industry in Germany. The worldwide growth of trade wars and military wars is pushing competition for raw materials, energy and markets to dangerous levels. This is putting the steel industry in Germany and across Europe under considerable pressure.

In June, the bankruptcy of the largest steel mill in the Czech Republic was confirmed by the courts. The Liberty Ostrava plant is owned by Liberty Steel, which in turn is part of the GFG Group, owned by British-Indian billionaire Sanjeev Gupta. GFG acquired the plant from the Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal Group in 2019. With more than 5,000 employees, it is one of the largest employers in the region.

In Italy, ArcelorMittal pulled out of its insolvent Taranto steel mill, one of Europe’s largest, four months ago. Acciaierie d’Italia (ADI)—the Italian steel company formerly known as Ilva—was only acquired by ArcelorMittal in 2018. Now Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has placed it under state supervision. Some 8,000 workers fear for their jobs.

A few weeks ago we wrote:

In this situation, steelworkers must not allow themselves to be chained by IG Metall to the companies and the federal government. They are busy sacrificing their livelihood to the war plans of the ruling elite.

Immediately after the start of the war in Ukraine, IG Metall Baden-Württemberg, together with the employers’ association Südwestmetall, issued a joint statement in support of NATO’s war against Russia and announced: “These measures will require sacrifices from all of us.” Last year, the IGM also took part in the joint action convened by Chancellor Olaf Scholz to discuss how the billions involved could be passed on to the working class.

Together with the defense industry, the union is calling for the build-up of the country’s war and arms industry. Oliver Burkhard, a former union official, is the head of one of Germany’s largest defense companies, Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS).

This tight network of works council representatives and union officials, members of the supervisory board and personnel directors is now introducing the next round of social cuts. The steelworkers of Thyssenkrupp, HKM, Salzgitter, ArcelorMittal, Georgsmarienhütte, etc. are confronted with this united front. They are supposed to pay for the pro-war policy with their jobs.

This must not be allowed. The fight against job losses must be linked to the fight against war. This can only be done against the IG Metall, not with it.

We call on all Thyssenkrupp employees to participate in the creation of an action committee to defend in principle all jobs and workers’ rights.

Contact us! It is time to take action and organize a revolt against IG Metall and the dictatorship of the works council. Send a WhatsApp message to +491633378340 or register via the form below.