Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-25-Speech-2-501-000"
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"en.20111025.29.2-501-000"2
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"Madam President, from the speeches of some of the other Members, one would get the impression that ArcelorMittal is simply an isolated bad apple. Unfortunately, it is not: it is part of a tree of rotten apples; it is part of a trend of profitable corporations using the crisis as a cover to throw thousands, or tens of thousands, of workers onto the scrapheap in order to maximise already healthy profits and push them up even further.
This represents a failure of right-wing governments and their policies, and their fawning over these corporations: the creation of taxation policies to suit these corporations and the giving of subsidies to these corporations. Look at the massive tax breaks from which ArcelorMittal has benefited in Belgium. ArcelorMittal Belgium declared EUR 59 million in profits and paid EUR 42 000 in taxes. ArcelorMittal Upstream announced profits of EUR 35 million and paid a whopping EUR 936 in taxes, and ArcelorMittal Finance managed to declare profits of EUR 1.4 billion and not pay a single cent in taxes.
What is the thanks for this generosity on the part of the Belgian State, paid for by Belgian workers and by the impact on public services and so on? Almost 1 000 direct job losses, and many more jobs indirectly lost.
The same applies in Ireland where, despite our generous corporation tax rate, and despite increasing its European profits by 21% over the past year, the insurance company Aviva is still committed to laying off 1 000 workers. The response of the Commission reminds me of the response of the Irish Government, which is mere lip service – crocodile tears for the workers who have lost their jobs, but a continuation of the policies that got us here.
I support the demands of the workers in ArcelorMittal to nationalise that company to save the jobs, and I think the trade union movement across Europe must, in the context of unemployment and the context of the crisis, wage a campaign to have any major corporation threatening job losses taken into democratic public ownership and run under democratic workers’ control."@en1
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