Alec Thraves, Swansea and West Wales Socialist Party and Swansea Trades Council
Tata Steel bosses have declared the start of a legally obliged, 45-day formal consultation process, which could culminate in the initial loss of 2,423 jobs across the UK, with 1,929 of those in Port Talbot, representing exactly half the workforce.
Tata’s phoney war is over after TV Narendran, the global chief executive of Tata Steel and the CEO of Tata Steel UK, told a hearing of parliament’s Welsh Affairs Committee that his “shareholders had grown weary over the billions of pounds spent on the plant during 15 years of ownership”. When asked if the closure of the furnaces was a ‘done deal’ he said “given our financial situation and the quality of assets, we are pretty much there.”
This brutal and intransigent message from Tata was reinforced after Labour shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds’ plea to keep one of the furnaces operational during the green transition was contemptuously dismissed as “not operationally feasible and financially not affordable”
Even the unanimous support of all the Labour-led Welsh parliament’s Senedd members to support and retain primary steel making at Port Talbot has not dented Tata’s determination to shutdown both the furnaces! But steel unions must now demand that this support be turned into intervention to keep the furnaces firing. The unions should demand that the Welsh Labour Government seize ownership of the steelworks if any attempt is made by Tata to switch off the blast furnaces.
The bosses of Tata couldn’t be clearer – the shareholders and their profits always come first. Steelworkers, their families and our communities, are just collateral damage to be thrown on the scrapheap.
40 years after the Tories’ destruction of the mining industry in South Wales, which devastated communities in the Valleys forever, Tata’s chief executives were using the ‘Thatcher Room’ in Westminster to announce a similar plan for the destruction of Port Talbot steelworks!
The thousands of job losses, both inside and outside the steelworks, will turn Port Talbot into more of a ghost town than it is now.
Huge support for workers
On the streets and housing estates of Port Talbot and Aberavon there is almost unanimous support for the steelworkers’ struggle.
This was highlighted at a recent protest organised by Unite the Union outside the steelworks. Local resident Kirsty McCusker, who like most people in Port Talbot has a relative working in the plant, said at the protest if these jobs go: “The town is not going to be the same, it’s going to be empty, it’s going to devastate it. The workers are spending their money in the shops and takeaways. We haven’t got much here as it is and what we have got here, they only keep going because that’s where the steelworkers spend their money. So, it’s going to affect everyone!”
Mike Rivers, a retired steelworker, and previously Unite deputy convener at the plant, reiterated the impact on the wider community: “It’s going to affect all the communities, from Bridgend up to Swansea, and of course all the valleys.”
That’s why there is huge support for demonstrations called by the steel unions in Port Talbot and Newport on 17 February. These need to be built as mass mobilisations.
It will send a loud message to Tata and the government that the fight is on to defend jobs and our communities. It will also send a message to Keir Starmer and Labour, which could be in office in a matter of months, that steelworkers have no trust in Tata nor any other big corporation to invest in the transition to ‘green steel’.
Unite the union, under the fighting leadership of general secretary Sharon Graham, has turned its considerable resources in support of the steelworkers, with numerous public events in Port Talbot, regular meetings with members and propaganda material distributed widely outlining the case to Save Steel.
There are tactical differences between Unite and the other two steel unions Community and GMB, which had put forward a compromise position to Tata (which was dismissed), on how to resist the jobs slaughter. These differences must now be overcome in order to have a united response to save jobs.
The ‘Syndex plan’, drawn up by consultants and supported by Community and GMB, proposed a phased transition to green steel which would have seen several hundred jobs disappear, mainly through voluntary redundancies, with the retention of one blast furnace during the green transition to electric-arc production.
Unite correctly opposed the loss of any jobs during the transition period and put its own plan forward, ‘A Workers’ Plan for Port Talbot’, with the central argument that ‘workers must not pay the price for the transition’.
A ‘Workers Plan for Port Talbot’ contains many positive and practical alternatives to retain primary steelmaking in Port Talbot on a ‘green’ basis.
It argues that to move to ‘green steel’ and double production capacity, investment of £12 billion by 2035 would be needed, a significant portion made up of public money. It also states “public investment for steel must come with solid job guarantees – and a public stake in the industry”.
Labour must pledge nationalisation
But Tata’s actions show that it can’t be trusted with public money, or to stick to ‘job guarantees’. Only by taking the steelworks into public hands, nationalising it under democratic workers’ control and management, can jobs be secured into the future.
Unite and the rest of the trade union movement should be demanding Keir Starmer pledges now that a future Labour government would immediately nationalise the plant to save jobs. ‘Nationalisation not devastation’ should be the rallying call. In response to the Labour leadership’s inevitable argument that this would be ‘unaffordable’ – there should be compensation only on the basis of proven need. Investment should be to develop the site and create jobs, not pay off Tata’s fat-cat bosses.
Starmer and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves are repeatedly parroting their mantra of ‘fiscal responsibility’, reassuring the bosses that they won’t spend public money. They are already backtracking on their promised £28 billion of green investment.
But in the 1970s, even Edward Heath’s Tory government was forced to nationalise Rolls Royce ‘in the national interest’. Working-class pressure and trade union action can force government intervention.
The steel unions must put both Starmer and the Welsh Labour government under severe pressure to intervene to stop the virtual destruction of Part Talbot steelworks.
Industrial action and mass public support, mobilised in mass demonstrations, for nationalisation is absolutely necessary to save our steel and jobs!
The fuse has been lit on the 45-day legal consultation process, needed when a company announces large scale redundancies.
Despite all unions agreeing that the timescale for this process is far too short for adequate negotiations, the fact remains that, by the middle of March, Tata can legally sack 1,929 steel workers in Port Talbot.
The urgent and immediate course of action is to use the planned demonstrations in Port Talbot and Newport on 17 February as a launching pad for a massive ‘yes’ vote for industrial action.
A positive mandate for industrial action by all the unions will have a huge impact on the energy and morale of steelworkers and the community, who will enthusiastically support such direct action to protect their livelihoods.
With such a mandate, the steel unions can then discuss how to organise the most appropriate forms of strike action, including a warning strike, 24-hour strikes or longer, combined with other industrial actions inside the plant, such as occupation, if that becomes necessary.
This is a fight for the survival of not just a steelworks but of a whole community, and with a bold and determined leadership this can be successfully won, and becoming a beacon for future struggles.
Nationalisation not devastation!
