“Crazy potential”: how 40 employees saved Scop la Meusienne in 42 days

Ancerville (Meuse), special envoy.

Past the electric gate that opens onto the factory's immense parking lot, calm reigns over this vast 3,300-square-meter site surrounded by industrial buildings. This serenity contrasts with the burning tires of the numerous picket lines that punctuated the mobilizations of the metallurgical plant's employees in the 2010s, then in 2017 and 2024, as successive owners adopted buyouts and layoff plans.

Today, ArcelorMittal and other German investment funds have disappeared. But the Ancerville (Meuse) SME, specializing in the manufacture of welded stainless steel tubes, is still there. In the summer of 2024, 40 employees took the gamble of taking over the business as a cooperative. The company is now called Scop la Meusienne.

It wasn't really planned that these 40 "metalworkers" would become their own bosses. In April 2024, the factory was placed...