Industrial sector melts away

18th September 2012, 0 comments

Arcelor Mittal is to scrap its 138 million euro investment plan in the cold-rolling mill at its Liege plant, where raw steel plates are transformed into finished products. This means that some 2,000 jobs are under threat. Last year the management decided to shut its hot rolling production line, consisting of two blast furnaces, which resulted in the loss of 800 jobs. Meanwhile the automobile industry has also found itself in dire straits, and in the wake of the closures of Renault Vilvoorde and Opel Antwerp the future of Ford Genk is now hanging by a thread. Today a decision will be made at the Ford head office in Detroit on a European restructuring plan and the fate of the Ford factory in Genk. These are gloomy reports that seem to confirm the gradual death of employment in the Belgian industrial sector. In Flanders alone, employment in the so-called secondary sector industry and construction sunk by 30,000 jobs in the last three years, according to figures released by the Centre for Employment and Social Economy. Between the first quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2011, employment in the sector dropped by six percent. However the total employment figures in that period remained more or less the same, as the number of service and public service jobs increased. Professor Paul De Grauwe of the London School of Economics sees the figures as a confirmation of his thesis that the further shrinking of industry in Flanders is unavoidable. ‘In the long term, industrial sector employment will amount to less than ten percent of the total. This is not a drama, as this decrease is more than compensated for in other sectors. There is no point whatsoever in trying to stop it, as it is inevitable.’ But the chairman of the Metal Union of the socialist ABVV Herwig Jorissen sees things differently. ‘We have to continue fighting for every job,’ he said. ‘Industry is under much pressure, and doom-mongering with respect to a future without major industry does not help us.’