Thyssenkrupp Steel: Invest and save even more

As an outsider, you don’t have to understand everything that is celebrated on this July Friday at Thyssenkrupp Steel in Duisburg-Bruckhausen. The brand new strand casting system. The extensively modernized warm tape plant. The two new lifting beam stoves. The fully automated Brammen logistics. The employees here understand it very well.

They say: All of these systems are good for Thyssenkrupp, this iron piece of Germany. They are crucial for the city of Duisburg with all its social problems. They are vital for the entire industrial location of Germany. The board of directors took a gigantic 800 million euros in hand. “HAMMER!” Says a buddy with a Ruhr mucker brevity, while red -glowing bridges pass on ligaments in his shoulder height. Brammen are up to ten meters long steel blocks that are later, warm or cold, to be rolled into thin steel.

It is a festive day, which also find independent stahlers: the new technology in the largest steel mill by Thyssenkrupp, which creates the higher -quality material in a shorter time, has what it takes to produce the best steel in Europe in the future. “This ensures our leadership role,” says Dennis Grimm, board spokesman for Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe. Cheers from the workforce. Who doesn’t want to believe it? 800 million euros have to help to finally wake up from this non -ending nightmare from fear for the workplace!

But again today the other penetrates the dark side of the job. It has long been clear that 11,000 employees have to go. And now, of all people on this holiday, the IG-Metall stabbed a board plan, according to which the workforce is also supposed to do without 200 million euros annually. Tailor payments such as vacation and Christmas bonuses: Give. Zero rounds in the collective bargaining.

The Thyssenkrupp group under the gruff boss Miguel Lopez wants to separate the steel division and prefer to convert to a 50:50 joint venture with a holding of the controversial Czech billionaire Daniel Kreinsky. The employee representatives feel rumbling permanently and led around the nose. It’s a lot of pressure on the boiler, sometimes less, sometimes more. Fear and anger alternate with confidence and spirit of optimism. Whatever remains is the industrial action. There is a permanent cinema in front of the Werkstor one. Two works council women on a bench stretch their legs into the sun and give out coffee if necessary. Your gray resistance tent should hardly survive the next storm.

They are and remain difficult times, and there is also no glimmer of hope from Berlin. It is rumored behind the scenes that nobody really knows what the German steel under the new Chancellor Friedrich Merz will be in the next few years.

Over the past few years, the traditional group should become a new world power by converting production to climate -friendly, green hydrogen, green steel should become a new cashier. BUND and Land promised billions in subsidies.

But now the topic of climate protection has somehow flooded in the flood of bad news from Ukraine and the Middle East. The green glimmer of hope fades. Even before the election, Chancellor Merz had made it clear that he did not believe in a quick switch to green hydrogen. And Minister of Economics Katherina Reiche? “We still have no idea what they really want,” says a board employee.

The strong competitor Arcelormittal has just announced that it would stop his plans for the production of green steel in Bremen and Eisenhüttenstadt for the time being. The procedure is neither economical, nor do there are enough sustainable hydrogen. The federal government and the state of Bremen had already promised funding of 1.3 billion euros.

A few workers at Thyssenkrupp come to tell: those at ArcelorMittal can easily say goodbye. They produce worldwide and can postpone production facilities and products to stay back and forth. But we rely on expanding our world market position in Germany. For us, green steel is still the number one hope for this. The Thyssenkrupp Steel board, so rumors, Merz’s assessment does not come completely inconvenient because you get more time.

If the mood is right down, then Mona Neubaur likes to tear to Bruckhausen, the Green Minister of Economic Affairs of North Rhine -Westphalia. Even today, she came in black, as always, only this time her outfit looks a bit sad. He doesn’t just feel like celebrating. “There is a lot of serious discussion here,” she begins her speech. A few loudspeakers help her prevail against the roar of the bridges and ligaments and cranes.

Neubauer praises Thyssenkrupp over the green clover. Then it becomes really emotional again: The “Future Project Grüner Stahl in Germany” continues unabated, she and the state government under CDU Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst stand without any ifs and buts to “go to the home stretch”. Here, “the lighter, thinner metal for future mobility is created.” Big applause.

She also says: job cuts and wages were accompanied by a good future. Both sides would have to do their best to get the curve. Some with 800 million investments, others with shorter. At that moment a pigeon over the minister. It is not white, but at least.

At the end of the event there is currywurst in rough quantities. “Come on Vonne Schicht / Wat Schönret does not give it like currywurst,” sang Herbert Grönemeyer from the nearby Bochum. For now everyone is full and satisfied.