Overview
- The company notified workers on Monday that it will not renew roughly 150 fixed-term contracts at the SIAT plant in Valentín Alsina, a reduction set to take effect around July 1 and equal to about 43% of the roughly 350-strong workforce.
- The decision follows months of reduced activity and suspension schemes at the plant after Tenaris lost a large Southern Energy pipeline tender to India's Welspun, a contract executives said represented a major share of the plant’s expected workload.
- Tenaris and Grupo Techint have made no public comment on the non-renewals, while union delegates from the Unión Obrera Metalúrgica say they requested extension of suspensions to avoid job losses and have notified the Buenos Aires provincial Labour Ministry, which pledged to intervene.
- Union statements and local outlets link the drop in orders to increased competition from cheaper foreign pipe suppliers and to recent trade-opening rules that allow tariff-free imports for some energy projects; the dispute has also played out publicly between President Javier Milei and Paolo Rocca.
- The cuts will sharply reduce local jobs and shift plant operations to a single production shift, raising short-term hardship for affected workers and creating a test case for how labour, industry and government respond to import competition and future pipeline tenders.