1,000 Tata Steel jobs at risk in Scunthorpe restructure
TATA STEEL is expected to announce up to 1,200 job cuts, largely at its Scunthopre production site this week.
Tata Steel is expected to cut the workforce significantly at its Scunthorpe site, which employs 4,000 people and is one of the UK’s largest steel plants, according to the The Telegraph.
The potential job losses also involve staff at two facilities in Scotland.
A high-level summit in Rotherham on Friday 16 October, where another Tata site is located, was led by Business Secretary Sajid Javid over the UK’s steel crisis.
The government has said that demand for steel worldwide has not returned to pre-crash levels, and that global demand for steel will remain sluggish, falling by 1.7% in 2015 and rising by 0.7% in 2016.
The yuan and rouble have devalued, adding further pressure to the UK steel industry, and leading to closures, such as the one in Redcar, Teesside.
In an article for This is Money, Gareth Stace, director of trade body UK Steel said: “The steel industry in Britain is lean and mean. It employs 30,000 highly-skilled people and underpins many other areas of manufacturing and their supply chains. Its very survival is inextricably linked to ambitions to rebalance the economy.
“Ministers can act decisively in support of the industry. That doesn’t mean subsidies or unfair state support. It means taking action to ensure that steel producers are on a level playing field with their EU competitors and are not operating with one hand tied behind their backs.
“It also means rolling back some of the disproportionate policy costs that artificially inflate electricity prices.”
A spokesperson for Tata Steel said: “We’ve been talking about the challenges we’re facing in the UK for many months – surging imports, compounded by the strong pound and uncompetitive policy costs.
“We’ve made a number of structural changes to our UK business over the last months and years to make us more competitive. Like all companies we continue to review the performance of our business.”
Business Secretary Sajid Javid said:”There is no straightforward solution to the complex global challenges facing the steel industry.
“But today (16 October 2015) was an important opportunity to bring the key players together and we now have a framework of action.
“The government is committed to working closely with industry on both short-term and long-term issues and to doing everything we can to support both industry and the workers. A strong economy underpins everything and we will continue to focus on securing the UK’s economic recovery across the UK.
