Employees of ArcelorMittal Annaba go on strike again, production stops

On June 21, employees of El-Hajar-based ArcelorMittal Annaba, Algerian subsidiary of the world's largest steelmaker ArcelorMittal, began a strike for an indefinite period, halting production at the steel plant, according to the Algerian press.
 
The plant's director of communication Mohamed Guedha said, "The blast furnace has been halted this morning and all the activities in the plant have stopped accordingly," adding that the management will engage in procedures in order to achieve suspension of the strike.
 
As SteelOrbis previously reported, in mid-January this year the employees of ArcelorMittal Annaba had gone strike for nine days. In a letter written by ArcelorMittal Annaba's general director Vincent Legouic to the employees of the plant on June 8, 2010, Mr. Legouic said that the nine-day strike in January caused a loss of $6 million and a production shortfall of 36,000 metric tons.
 
The plant's annual crude steel production capacity is about 2 million metric tons.