ESSEN: Management at Thyssenkrupp Steel, Germany's largest steel producer with 27,000 employees, is in disarray,following the resignation of three board members and hefty criticism from the supervisory board chairman.
The loss-making steel division is to be restructured and made independent - but the financial backing from its parent company, Thyssenkrupp, has sparked a bitter dispute between it and the steel subsidiary. The fighting has been going on for weeks.
The steel division has long been suffering from the economic downturn and cheap imports, and as such has had to reduce capacities and therefore staff. The works council fears that a restructuring will "halve the steelworks," which would result in thousands of job losses.
Nearly half or 13,000 jobs are in Duisburg, an industrial city in the heart of the country's western steel region.
What these changes at the top will mean for employees' future is still completely open. The supervisory board wanted to draw up a financing plan for the next two years - but that never happened.
On Thursday, the company said that its chief executive, chief production officer and chief human resources officer were all leaving the firm, effective immediately.
Four of the steel firm's supervisory board members also announced that they would be resigning, including the board's previous chairman, Sigmar Gabriel, a well-known Social Democratic (SPD) politician who had served as foreign minister and vice chancellor under former chancellor Angela Merkel.
Gabriel had accused Thyssenkrupp chief executive Miguel López of a defamation campaign against the steel group's executive board and indirectly accused Siegfried Russwurm, the head of the steel group's executive board, of inaction.
Russwurm retorted that it was Thyssenkrupp Steel's management failure to provide effective answers to structural challenges in the steel business - not just in recent months but for years - that are the problem. Russwurm is also the head of the Federation of GermanIndustries (BDI).
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