Sharp exchange at shareholder meeting in Luxembourg

LUXEMBOURG -- "A newly-formed coalition of environmental and community groups - Global Action on ArcelorMittal - today released a report showing how local residents and workers around the world pay the price of ArcelorMittal's success. The report was launched at a press conference in Luxembourg to coincide with the company's annual shareholder meeting. It contains nine case studies detailing ArcelorMittal's legacy of pollution, environmental damage, health impacts and poor worker safety. In the report the coalition demands that ArcelorMittal implements environmental and health action plans in consultation with residents adjacent to the plants and plant workers in a democratic manner; Governments should not give ArcelorMittal perverse tax breaks or allow it to dispossess people from their land; and Public financial institutions should not support polluting industry such as ArcelorMittal, which has extensive resources of its own," press release, BankWatch Network.

Read the Report: In the wake of ArcelorMittal - the global steel giant's local impacts

LUXEMBOURG -- At the ArcelorMittal shareholder meeting yesterday, Liz Ilg, Ohio Citizen Action's Cleveland Program Director, asked Lakshmi Mittal, "Why do neighbors of your facilities around the world have to breathe rotten eggs, and children can't play outside in their yards?" An ArcelorMittal official approached Ilg and Phil Pavarinni, a Mittal Steel neighbor from Cleveland, and started to say that we shouldn't be allowed to speak. At this point, Pavarinni stood up and said, "We're shareholders, and we were told that's we're not allowed to speak. I don't know if that's how most companies would want to run their business." After Lakshmi Mittal defended his company's pollution record, Ilg told him, "You should come to Cleveland. Come and breathe the air that we're breathing there."

Listen to excerpt from Liz Ilg report by telephone from Luxembourg