4,700 layoffs in the next three years, of which 2,900 in 2020 - this is the condition set by ArcelorMittal Italia CEO Lucia Morselli during a meeting late on December 4 on the fate of the former Ilva plant in Tarento attended by Italian economic development minister Stefano Patuanelli and local labor unions. According to the plan presented by the CEO, the number of workers of the former Ilva Group would decrease by 2,900 as early as 2020 and by 1,800 in 2023. Overall, the number of workers would decline from the current 10,789 to 6,098 in 2023, when blast furnace No.2 would be shut down and an electric furnace would begin operating to guarantee 1.2 million mt of "clean" steel. This volume would be added to the 4.8 million mt coming from blast furnaces Nos. 1 and 4. Basically, production would increase from the current 4.5 million mt to 6 million mt. The new EAF would be a hybrid solution with loading of both scrap and liquid cast iron.
After CEO Morselli’s presentation of the plan, the meeting was suspended with unions calling the redundancies announced by the company "inadmissible" and announcing a protest in Rome for December 10. "There are no conditions to open a negotiation for an agreement. We must start from the agreement of a year ago, with the employment levels and investments indicated by the 2018 plan," labor unions Fiom, Uilm and Fim said in their statement.
Minister Patuanelli also expressed his disappointment, stating, "This is not the idea that the government has on the plant." He went on to say, "Between Friday and Monday, the government will present its industrial plan that will make Ilva an example of an industrial steel plant, with the use of sustainable technologies, electric furnaces and other eco-sustainable plants, with the target of reaching a production of 8 million mt to protect employment levels."