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Steel giant ArcelorMittal could lay-off nearly 1,000 employees at a furnace in the city of Dąbrowa Górnicza, in Silesia voivodship, at the beginning of next year, the company is reported as saying.

Local media wrote that ArcelorMittal Poland's management board sent a letter to the labor office in Dąbrowa Górnicza saying it plans to carry out collective redundancies involving about 980 people at the furnace.

The company is planning to shut down the blast furnace in question “to adapt capacity utilization to demand levels.” ArcelorMittal says it will re-open the furnace as soon as market conditions allow it to. It has not publicly announced the number of job cuts that will result from the closure, which is expected to take place early next year.

A meeting to discuss the situation in the local steel industry was organized earlier this week by the Silesia Voivodship Commission for Social Dialog (WKDS). Representatives from ArcelorMittal Poland and the company's unions took part.

Union members said closing the furnace could actually result in 3,000 people losing their jobs by the end of 2012.

They are worried this will have a “negative effect on the employment structure in the region, and will drive a further 5,000 layoffs in positions related to steel production,” the Silesian Voivodeship Office, which conducted the meeting, wrote in a statement. This could result in structural unemployment in Dąbrowskie Zagłębie, the region in which Dąbrowa Górnicza is located, the unions said.

Andrzej Wypych, a member of the board at ArcelorMittal Poland, said at the meeting that he would not comment on the number of layoffs until appropriate economic analyses had been completed.

However, Mr Wypych said the company plans to present six motions to the minister of economy, the implementation of which would improve the economic conditions of the steel industry in Poland. The motions concern Poland's fiscal policy, carbon dioxide limits, excise on electrical energy and changes to the employment code.

Izabela Depczyk