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Empresas y finanzas

Kazakh steel union eyes strike at Arcelor unit


    By Dmitry Solovyov

    ALMATY (Reuters) - Thousands of workers at ARCELOR (LOR.PA)(LOR.MC)ittal's steel mill in Kazakhstan staged a three-hour strike on Friday and warned of wider action to back demands for a 30-percent pay hike.

    The labour union at ArcelorMittal Temirtau, which said 3,000 staff joined the first-ever stoppage at the plant, has rejected a company offer of a 10-percent rise and has called for a halt in job cuts.

    The strike at Temirtau, where Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev worked for a decade and where ArcelorMittal employs one tenth of the 170,000 population, highlighted the risk for authorities of stoppages in one-industry centres.

    Months of industrial action in the oil town of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan erupted into bloody clashes with police in December, in which at least 14 people were killed in the Central Asian nation's worst violence in decades.

    Arcelor, the world's biggest steel maker, says it is facing problems selling its Kazakh output after losing access to its key market in Iran in the wake of western sanctions against Tehran.

    Vijay Mahadevan, chief executive of ArcelorMittal Temirtau, reiterated a proposal to raise wages by 10 percent and said negotiations could resume in October if the market stabilised.

    "This is the first-ever organised strike at the plant," Vladimir Dubin, head of the steelworkers' union at ArcelorMittal Temirtau, told Reuters by telephone.

    "There were sporadic disturbances in Temirtau back in the 1950s, but this is the first such strike since then," he said.

    Dubin said steel workers wanted a 30-percent increase in wages on top of a 7.4-percent adjustment for last year and demanded a moratorium on job cuts.

    "If we don't find a compromise solution, we have a lawful right to notify (management) that we start an open-ended strike," he said.

    Wages average 115,000 tenge ($770), above the national average of 98,000, but up to 70 percent of steelworkers get only between 50,000 tenge and 80,000 per month, Dubin said.

    ArcelorMittal Temirtau produced 3.68 million tonnes of crude steel last year, up from 3.34 million tonnes in 2010. Rolled steel output increased to 3.17 million tonnes from 2.92 million tonnes.

    (Editing by David Cowell)