Decimating a community
Demo over Tata Steel job cuts
WORRIED steelworkers last night told how their lives will be ripped apart if they lose their jobs.
Trade union members gathered in Westminster yesterday after 2,800 staff were put at risk. Most of the jobs will be at Tata Steel’s Port Talbot plant in South Wales, where its two blast furnaces are closing over the course of this year.
The firm will eventually replace them with more sustainable electric arc furnaces but has ruled out maintaining the old ones in the meantime.
It means that 2,800 jobs will be axed over the next 18 months.
Ieuan Eltham, 29, who has worked there since he was 16, said he never imagined he would be out of work as he was told it was “a job for life”.
“It is devastating news,” he told the Mirror at a protest organised by Unite. “I have an 11-month-old daughter.
My partner is really worried. We haven’t got answers yet. Everybody’s really worried.”
Ian Williams, 39, who started at the same plant 22 years ago, said: “Me and my wife have looked at the effect of losing a job, because going from two wages down to one is extremely worrying.
“What we can’t forget is that it’s about the jobs of the future. We’re only custodians of the
jobs. There are people in school now, eight, nine-years-old, where will they get jobs? This is decimating the whole community of South Wales.”
Jason Wyatt, 41, who has worked at Port Talbot, said: “There is a lot of worry because people haven’t got a clue what the detail is yet.”
In the Commons, Labour called on the firm not to make any “irreversible decisions” until after the election.
Speaking at the protest, Labour MP Paula Barker said: “This is one of the great industries left in this country and if you look back to the 1980s and the decimation of the mining communities under the Thatcher government, it’s very reminiscent of that.”
Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said it is “a calamitous mistake for the UK to become the first major economy in the world without the ability to make our own primary steel”.
A Government spokesman said the blast furnaces were losing Tata more than £1million a day and would have put 20,000 wider steel jobs at risk.
He added: “We have a £500million support package, to secure the transition of Welsh steel and save 17,000 jobs.” There is also help for those losing their jobs.
There are people in school now, where are they going to get jobs?
STEELWORKER IAN WILLIAMS ON NEXT GENERATION’S ISSUES