The president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6787 is calling a Wall Street Journal report this week that ArcelorMittal is planning to cut 10,000 jobs a “vicious rumor.”

Paul Gipson told the Chesterton Tribune today that the USW has been unable to substantiate that report. “We don’t know where they got it from,” he said. “There’s no facts to it at all.”

As the Associated Press reported on Tuesday, ArcelorMittal did say that it plans to cut an unspecified number of jobs next year “through attrition and ‘optimization of performance.’” But “that wouldn’t have any impact on the U.S. at all,” Gipson said. “That’s worldwide. At this point it’s just a rumor.”

In any case, Gipson noted, in November 2008 Local 6787 negotiated a layoff minimization plan with the company, after ArcelorMittal, invoking the Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, announced last fall the potential layoff of up to 2,444 members of Local 6787. That plan provided for the voluntary layoff of 490 members at the Burns Harbor facility, with any retirements counting toward that number, as well as the placing of as many as 900 workers on 32-hour weeks.

Local 6787 agreed to some other concessions too and Gipson has conceded that at the time the layoff minimization plan was a hard sell to the membership. But ArcelorMittal would have to re-negotiate that plan now to implement further reductions in the workforce at the Burns Harbor facility, he said. “They would have to let me know.”

In fact Gipson told the Tribune that in July he flatly rejected further concessions proposed by the company above and beyond those to which Local 6787 agreed in the layoff minimization plan.

AP also reported that ArcelorMittal is restarting the bar mill at its Indiana Harbor facility and will either recall or hire 150 to 200 employees as part of the restart.

ArcelorMittal is the world’s largest steelmaker with operations in more than 60 countries, with 315,867 employees worldwide at the end of 2008 and 36,686 in the U.S.

Posted 12/16/2009