2024-01-18 19:10:28
Jobs that melt like molten steel. The Indian steelmaker Tata Steel, which met unions on Thursday about the Port Talbot steelworks in Wales, “confirmed the closure” of its two blast furnaces and the elimination of “around 3,000 jobs”, the company learned. AFP from a source close to the matter.
The group, which intends to replace its blast furnaces with a less polluting electric equivalent, should make an official announcement on Friday, when a “45-day consultation” period now opens before job cuts, the same company said. source.
Millions of pounds injected
In September, the British government announced that it would inject up to 500 million pounds (more than 580 million euros) into the giant Port Talbot factory to help make it less polluting, but some 3,000 layoffs had already been mentioned. .
The Port Talbot plant “is currently the largest carbon emitter in the United Kingdom”, the executive also indicated, seeing in the closure of coal-fired blast furnaces a way of reducing the country’s overall carbon emissions. about 1.5%.
Unions proposed solutions
The GMB, Unite and Community unions, who met company managers in London on Thursday, said they wanted to propose “alternatives” to job cuts but did not succeed. “Large-scale job losses would be a major blow to Port Talbot and the British manufacturing industry in general,” responded GMB in a statement to AFP.
The unions had “proposed a realistic and costed alternative” to avoid forced departures but “this plan seems to have fallen on deaf ears”, lamented the union. In September, the British government argued that Tata Steel, the largest steel producer in the United Kingdom, employed 8,000 people in the country and that the subsidies granted were intended to preserve around 5,000.
Port Talbot, largest steelworks in the country
Tata Steel did not confirm the closures and job cuts on Thursday. The group indicated that it wanted to “always share its official announcements first with its employees,” according to a statement sent to AFP. The group has been “regularly and constructively engaging with union colleagues and their advisors for some time on the best way forward to create a sustainable green steel future for Tata Steel in the UK,” he added.
The sum injected by the British government into the steel factory in September is less than what the industrialist demanded. The group, which employs around half of its employees in the United Kingdom on this Port Talbot site, the largest steelworks in the country, had been in discussions with the British authorities for three years.
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