AHMSA bankruptcy, “a disastrous example of privatization”

Mexico City. The bankruptcy of Altos Hornos de Mexico (AHMSA) must be thoroughly investigated to hold accountable the owners, shareholders and directors who led it to this situation due to their inefficiency and great corruption in its operation, warned the leader of the Union of Mining, Metallurgical, Steel and Similar Workers of the Mexican Republic, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia.

In an interview, he commented that the collapse of AHMSA represents an enormous challenge for the government that Claudia Sheinbaum will soon lead, since nearly 20 thousand workers, many of them highly specialized, who depended directly on the steel company and the mines, will be left helpless, as will their families. Unemployed, with minimal or no severance pay, and not only Monclova, where the company is located, is at risk, but also the entire coal region of Coahuila.

This declaration of bankruptcy was expected, as it represents a serious social problem and is the best example of the harmful consequences of the privatization that Carlos Salinas de Gortari carried out by handing over profitable public companies to friends and supporters, including AHMSA, which ended up in the hands of Alonso Ancira, who had no experience in the steel sector and was a dishonest politician and businessman involved in scams and fraud.

Senator Gómez Urrutia said he is very concerned about the situation of the workers who, since 1944 when the company began operating, were affiliated with the Miners’ Union and the majority remained in it, although from 2006 Ancira hired thugs and brought in a union organization.

The vast majority of AHMSA’s colleagues remained in the union, with their collective contract, which was one of the best and which unfortunately they are going to lose. From our legal department we are going to fight so that in the process labor rights come first, but the reality is that the bankruptcy judge is the one who will decide, based on the resources that the company has, how they are distributed..

Like the workers of the company and of the mines that AHMSA had in Monclova and Durango, the suppliers and contractors who depended 100 percent on the sales of the steel company, Everyone is going to suffer because Ancira left what was the number one steel company in the country as a large cemetery, with the facilities abandoned, looted, since he sold and mortgaged part of the machinery, in the dark, because the CFE cut off the electricity..

Gómez Urrutia stressed that Ancira received AHMSA in 1991, a consortium that grew for half a century under the direction of the State. However, the owner of the then Grupo Acerero del Norte dedicated himself to looting the company and when his criminal process for fraud against Pemex began, he left it with accumulated debts so large, between labor liabilities and with contractors, as well as with suppliers, of more than a billion dollars, in addition to another loan with foreign banks, that it has been almost impossible to find a possible buyer.

Dr. Sheinbaum will have to make this case a priority and look for alternatives that will allow the reactivation of this steel industry, on which not only Coahuila but also regions in other states depend.

In his opinion, one option could be to break up the consortium and restart with smaller activities, manufacturing the products with the highest demand on the market, such as sheets for the white goods industry or rods for construction.

It requires a very complicated diagnosis, but at the same time, responsibility must be held for Alonso Ancira and the other shareholders who plundered such a rich industrial complex that they left it bankrupt..

It is not fair, he added, that while thousands of workers were left with nothing, they surely have their capital, which they extracted from AHMSA, in tax havens.”