‘Tata Steel and the Tories are going to tear the soul out of our communities’

I’ve labored in and across the metal business all my life. Steel is part of me, in the identical means it is part of each single metal employee in Port Talbot and surrounding websites, part of the very neighborhood, the very identification of Port Talbot itself.

That’s why the announcement by Tata this week of two,800 pointless job losses goes to be so devastating. The UK Government and Tata are going to tear the center and soul out of our communities.

This 3mt EAF solely plan is just the incorrect one. It’ll take away our home metal making capability, making us the one G20 nation not in a position to produce metal domestically. A frankly baffling strategic mistake by the UK Government.

It gained’t obtain the purported goals of the UK Government and Tata to make our business greener. Rather it merely offshores our carbon footprint, and in addition jobs, to different nations world wide as we’ll must import supplies from extra carbon intensive economies.

There just isn’t a single factor of this deal that’s good for metal, good for the UK, or good for our planet. It’s a nasty deal pure and easy, and what compounds this much more is that there’s one other plan out there.

Community Union and GMB have put ahead a multi-union plan that protects our home metal making capability, protects jobs, and protects our planet. By constructing a smaller EAF, protecting one blast furnace working whereas it’s constructed, and creating a DRI facility we will retain jobs, retain our strategic metal making functionality, all whereas making our business greener. Tata themselves admitted of their assembly with us that this was a reputable different to their plan.

So why hasn’t it been adopted? In one phrase, low cost. The watchword of this Government, of this firm has been low cost. All they care about is what’s the most cost-effective possibility, not what’s the proper possibility. Not what’s the possibility that delivers on the wants of our members, our nation, and our planet. The folks of Port Talbot have been offered out for a pound store deal.

While the UK Government has abandoned its duty, Community will proceed to struggle for our members and stand-up for the strategic pursuits of our nation.