London, Feb 20 (Inditop.com) Angry unions threatening strike action warned Tata-owned Corus it will face “maximum damage” as the steel giant began mothballing a plant in northeast England after investors walked away.
Corus, the European arm of Tata Steel, began decommissioning its Teesside Cast Products (TCP) plant in Redcar – a step that would throw up to 1,600 workers out of their jobs, with a possible 8,000 more job losses in the local supply chain.
A brass band played to some 300 locals to mark what was described as the end of an era in a region with a history of 150 years of steel making, as Corus shut down the giant blast furnace at TCP Friday.
Corus has described its move as a “mothballing, not a permanent closure”, a step it says it was forced to take after a consortium of four steelmakers in May last year reneged on an agreement to buy 78 percent of the steel plates produced at TCP over 10 years.
But the head of the Community Union representing Corus workers warned Tata of severe consequences.
“Tata Corus have walked away from Teesside. We know that there are a number of good faith offers on the table, yet Tata Corus are not interested,” union General Secretary Michael Leahy said.
“A redundancy from a mothballed plant is the same as a redundancy from a closed plant. We will be seeking to make surgical strikes that will cause maximum damage to Tata Corus and minimum damage to our members,” he warned.
GMB, Britain’s general union, said it will ballot Corus workers across the country for industrial action over the coming weeks – a move that comes at an inconvenient time for the ruling Labour Party ahead of general elections due by June 3.
If workers vote for strike action, they will seek to disrupt Corus’s remaining operations at the site, which include a coke works and a port.
The first round of 300 redundancies are expected at the end of February with the rest of the jobs going over the following three months in a country that just has begun to show signs of emerging from the global recession.
“The decision is bad for Britain and for our manufacturing industry and our members will now be asked to respond,” said Keith Hazlewood, national officer of the GMB.
The political significance of the mothballing was reinforced when Business Minister Lord Peter Mandelson, the number two in the British cabinet, visited the plant Thursday and pledged a sum of 60 million pounds to the area.
“Politically, we are not going to walk away from this plant. We stand full square behind it. We will do everything we can to bring it out of mothballing and back into production as everyone around here wants to see,” Mandelson said.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that “a number of companies” are interested in buying the plant.
