I was among the 15 lucky ArcelorMittal colleagues who participated last week in a workshop on Yoga, Pranayam and Meditation techniques in our corporate offices in Luxembourg.

Before joining, I could guess what yoga and meditation were about, but the word ‘pranayam’ was a mystery to me. Now I know it consists of breathing exercises… which made me discover parts of my lungs I think I never knew existed before!

Our trainer was Pramod Jain, a colleague based in India who often comes to the corporate office for business. And when the working day finishes (after 6pm)… the very special yoga training begins! A long day for Pramod, but it’s worth it: “I do it because of the joy I feel inside myself when I practice yoga: I want to share it with as many people as possible.” And share he does!

At the end of the week, most of the participants could already notice some of the benefits of yoga, pranayam and meditation: some said they had lost weight; others had less pain in the back and most of us felt physically and mentally fitter. And everyone smiled!

Not surprising, considering that we heard the following mantra at least once a day for an entire week, as part of the instructions to yoga practitioners: “Put a smile on your face. If you can’t make it, then you have to fake it, but you must always have it.”

Because as Pramod says: “If you keep on smiling, problems will come and leave again. Problems don’t stay with people who smile.”

By the end of 2010, Spain should be the country with the largest high-speed network in service – more than 2,500 kilometres, ahead of leading nations in this means of transport such as France or Japan. ArcelorMittal Asturias, in Spain, is contributing to this project by providing so far the vast majority of the rails used to build this critical infrastructure.

Our Asturian rail mill started producing rails to be used in the AVE (both the Spanish word for ‘bird’ and acronym of Alta Velocidad Española – Spanish High Speed) in 1990, and it expects to opt to all public competitions in order to keep on supplying the high-speed rails until 2020.

By then, and unless the Spanish austerity plan just announced by the government has an impact on the high speed investments, Spain will have a total of 10,000 km of high-speed lines and all capitals of the province will be connected to the network. This means that 90% of Spanish people will live less than 50 km away from an AVE station!

ArcelorMittal Asturias is not only producing rails for the Spanish high-speed network, though: Germany and Turkey also have a strong presence of our rails in their high-speed networks, and the mill has produced all kinds of rails for over 30 countries.

Why? Partly because of its technology, which allows rolling rails up to 90 metres long. This is an advantage for high-speed trains because longer rails mean less welding and less movement. “The longer the rail is, the more difficult it is to produce. The state-of-the-art devices of our finishing line allow us to be among the only high-speed producers in the world,” explains Pablo Bermejo, Rail mill manager of ArcelorMittal Asturias.

Thanks to our Asturian rails, you can travel today from Madrid to Barcelona in 2 hours 40 minutes, and soon it will be possible to go from London to the Costa del Sol by high-speed train…

Want to know more about our Asturian rails? Check out this video!

Collaboration: Gerardo Alonso and Alberto Carrero, ArcelorMittal Spain, Communications

April 28, 2010. Very early in the morning. Our plants and offices worldwide are finalising preparations for Health and Safety Day, one of the most important dates in the Group’s calendar. So is ArcelorMittal Differdange, in Luxembourg, especially as they are expecting a special visitor…

9.15am. Top management of the site, union representatives and journalists wait for Chairman and CEO Mr Mittal at the site’s administrative building. Phone call: “we will be there in 2 minutes.” The plant CEO welcomes Mr Mittal and, after a short presentation about the site, the visit starts.

9.40am. At the Centre de Formation, dozens of Differdange colleagues are participating in workshops on fire-fighting, shared vigilance, the golden rules of traffic in a steel plant (if you ever drive through Differdange, remember to respect the stops you find every 10 metres!), healthy food and hygiene… In the middle of the session, Mr Mittal enters the room. After a few moments of smiles and greetings, the workshop continues normally. As all sessions are in French, Mr Mittal welcomes the translations of the plant CEO.

10.45am. Time to visit the facilities where the steel which was used to build the Atomium in Brussels and the future Freedom Tower in New York was produced. Continuous caster, rolling mill… Mr Mittal seizes the opportunity to ask plenty of questions and share his views with the people in charge of each facility. “One can see that he is very interested in the technical aspects,” says a line manager.

12.15am. The Chairman and CEO leaves the plant under a bright sun. Just before, there’s still time for a short video interview for ArcelorMittal employees. The key message? Health and Safety Day should be every day of our lives…

March 23. Web TV Episode 2, The Restart, is ready for our CFO Aditya Mittal to review (as he does with every episode that you can watch on this site). But Corporate Communications encounters an obstacle: Aditya is in Brazil, visiting different sites and with very limited internet access… so we will need to wait for a few days to show him the clip.

… or not! “Why don’t you try to find out where exactly in Brazil Aditya is, and see if a communications colleague on the spot can show him the episode?” Stefan Schwarz, Head of Internal Communications, asks me. And so the machine starts: Aditya’s Executive Assistant confirms that he is arriving in Tubarao tonight. I contact our colleague Sidemberg Rodrigues, Communications Manager at Tubarao, who happens to be picking Aditya up at the airport.

“I will download the file right now and maybe, if he is not too tired after landing, he can watch it during the transfer from the airport to the hotel!” Sidemberg says.

So he shows Aditya the video, Aditya says “excellent”… and the episode is validated! Just in time for you to watch and thanks to the collaboration of a global team that ‘never sleeps’. Muito obrigados, Sidemberg!

The game consists of a virtual journey across different places of the district. ArcelorMittal Warszawa is one of the locations where the final part of the plot takes place. In fact, it has been chosen as the most interesting location by players.

But not everything is virtual in the game: Among all registered players of ‘Mission Bielany’ local authorities picked up 50 finalists. The final ceremony was organised on Saturday March 20 in the real world: the new rolling mill of ArcelorMittal Warszawa.

Those 50 ‘secret agents’ assisted to a final fight (performed by professional stuntmen) between Bielany secret agent and the bad guys.

After the happy end of this battle, 3 main winners were picked up randomly by ArcelorMittal Warszawa CEO and the mayor of Bielany. The winners were awarded with cameras sponsored by ArcelorMittal Warszawa. All finalists received ‘Mission Bielany’ t-shirts and visited the rolling mill. The event was broadcasted by local Warsaw TV and covered by local newspapers.

Do you feel like testing your secret agent skills? Go to http://www.misjabielany.pl/ (English version of the game available)

Collaboration: Ewa Karpinska, PR manager, ArcelorMittal Warszawa

You have heard in Episode 1 the feelings and concerns that ArcelorMittal people, from top management to the shop floor, experienced during the crisis. This period has been a tough test for the entire Group, and especially for our leaders.

In the worst moment of the crisis, the Communications team launched Our Leaders Speak – an internal series of video interviews with our top executives about the impact of the crisis in their areas, the measures taken and key challenges ahead.

These are some of the things that they told us…:

• “The economic crisis has been in many respects a blessing in disguise: it has forced us to do things that we were otherwise too busy to think about during the ‘supercycle’”
• “We should never take for granted that good times will last forever”
• “We must expect the worst from the external world, but be extremely optimistic about what we can achieve together”
• “We can look forward to continuing to work for a very healthy company: We were overall very strong getting into this crisis, and we are very well positioned to emerge even stronger”
• “We have to move from survival mode into forward looking mode”
• “All of us ArcelorMittal employees after this are going to come out of this much more united, in order to make a much better company and be the leader – not only in terms of tonnes, but for all our workers, suppliers, customers and communities”
• “This crisis was a sprint race – we must keep the same will to win in the marathon of the future”

Watch all the Our Leaders Speak videos on the Group’s intranet www.myarcelormittal.com – ArcelorMittal employees only

This furnace is a very important communication centre at the plant, as it’s in permanent relation with the steelmaking plant, the ladle furnace, the continuous casting and the Grey rolling mill. My main mission here is to heat the beam blanks that will serve to produce customer’s orders.

We have gone through a period of uncertainty. During the crisis we produced less that in previous years, but thanks to the social measures, we could avoid unemployment due to the crisis.

In my case, I was forced to take all the days-off that I had accumulated in the last years. The Group, however, has been affected in a different way depending on the segment and location.

The beginning of 2010 looks a bit more positive, we’ve seen a pickup in orders from customers and I hope the trend will continue. The beginning of the year has been quite promising, but in fact, I am not fully convinced that we are living a real economic recovery. The media announce a recovery in the steel industry but only time will tell…”

Where’s the border between noise and music? How artistic can steel (and steelmaking) be? This is what participants to the family concert ‘Heavy Metal’ will be able to explore in Luxembourg on March 13. The concert, supported by the ArcelorMittal Foundation, will include an exhibition of steel sculptures created at our Differdange Training centre.

12 trainees from the Centre de Formation ArcelorMittal at Differdange have spent a few weeks collecting scrap, creating sketches and finally assembling and welding the different steel parts. The result ? 8 sculptures representing figurines, musical instruments and even abstract art.

The sculptures will be exhibited at the concert hall on D-Day. Afterwards, the works of our budding artists (perhaps some of them have discovered a new vocation!) will be displayed at the Centre de Formation.

Jérôme Weber, one of the trainees tells us: ”This project has provided us with an opportunity to work with artists. We could develop our own ideas and be creative while making these sculptures. Thanks to the guidelines and good advice of 2 artists (the Luxembourgish Michel Feinen and Jhang Meis), we’ve been able to improve them.”

“For once, we’ve been able to work without following to the letter a well determined plan,” explains his trainee fellow Jonathan Fernandes. “These sculptures are the result of our own imagination. We’ve had a great time working on this project.”

The concert ‘Heavy Metal’, organised by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, promises to be a great musical tribute to the Luxembourg steelmaking, a fascinating event for all ages.

Collaboration: Monique Muller-Haas, Communications, ArcelorMittal Luxembourg (Picture: Michel Feinen)

January 3, 2010. A fire starts in the village of Tenkoto, in the Kedougou region, Senegal. A fire with such violence had never occurred in this region. In a few minutes the whole village was destroyed: 400 huts were burned, 3 women died and more than 7,000 people were injured and homeless. How to prevent a similar disaster from happening again?

Our Group, through the ArcelorMittal Foundation, is helping rebuild the village. It was initially composed of straw huts and precarious housing. This contributed to rapidly spread the fire.

Our Group’s donation of 10 millions CFA (21,400 US dollars) as requested by the Senegalese government, will contribute to reconstruct the village, this time with safe and sustainable houses.

With the collaboration of other mining companies, funds were raised and will be managed by a committee for transparency.

The mining delegation in charge of the fund raising, local authorities and population expressed their gratitude to our Group. Our colleagues on the spot say they are proud to rebuild a safer Tenkoto.

Collaboration: Oumhany Sy, Corporate Responsibility, ArcelorMittal Senegal
Picture: One child in front of his burned house (tambacounda infos)

“I know that you all are very worried about what has happened in Haiti. Our Company, through the Foundation, is going to be there!” These are words of Felicidad Cristobal, Managing Director of the ArcelorMittal Foundation, when she announced that our Group will send 100,000 US dollars to Haiti.

This is our way to support an intervention from Médecins sans frontières for the victims affected by the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The donation will enable this MSF-intervention which aims to address the needs of around 70,000 persons affected by the earthquake.

“We were all very shocked when we saw what has happened during this terrible earthquake and felt we had to do something to support the population,” Felicidad says.

The MSF intervention on Haiti will concentrate on reducing the morbidity and the mortality among the affected population in the Ouest district of the Island.

This decision was taken by our Group Management Board only 2 days after the devastating earthquake. It is becoming a good tradition at ArcelorMittal to help people who are affected from big natural disasters like this: before Haiti, it was the case of the Italy earthquake (April 2009), the cyclone in Myanmar (May 2008) and the sustained support to the region affected by hurricane Katrina in the US (2005) – 4 important actions of our young Foundation.

Picture: © Stefano Zannini, Courtesy of Médecins sans frontières