Anger and uncertainty for British steelworkers

UK govt accused of prioritising China ties over steel jobs

PORT TALBOT, United Kingdom, April 1, (AFP): As smoke rises from the blast furnaces of the steelworks that employ thousands in the coastal Welsh town of Port Talbot, there is little outward sign of trouble.

Workers cycle home from their shifts in the spring weather, and the only sign of anything untoward is a cluster of television crews.

But beneath the surface all is far from well after Indian owner Tata Steel announced plans to sell its assets in Britain

The announcement could prove a critical blow to Britain’s once world-leading steel industry, which has been hit by a wave of layoffs and closures as producers struggle against high energy costs and plunging prices caused by a chronic global oversupply of steel.

“It wasn’t totally unexpected but it was still a shock,” said Alan Coombs, a representative of the Community trade union.

“I didn’t think that they would be so direct in saying that they wanted to put the UK steel concern up for sale.”

Tata’s plans to sell its British assets include Port Talbot and works in Scunthorpe and Rotherham in England, which they say are being particularly hit by cheap steel from China.

The group had already announced hundreds of jobs would go at Port Talbot, but the decision to sell puts some 15,000 jobs at risk — the bulk of those employed in Britain’s dwindling steel industry.

The Conservative government of David Cameron called crisis talks in response and the business minister flew back early from a trade trip to Australia as unions called for state help for the sector.

The Port Talbot factory, a major Welsh employer and once a cutting-edge plant, employs 4,000 people and many more indirectly.

The owner of the cafe across from the plant says the impact of the industry’s decline will hit the local economy hard.

“It’s not just the steel workers ... I think it will wipe out south Wales,” she said.

Behind the calm exterior, the feeling among workers is “trepidation, confusion ... anger” according to Mark Turner, a steelworker and representative of the Unite union.

“People within this workplace want to know, have they got a future, can they pay their mortgages,” Turner said. “They’re having to put their life on hold just in case of bad news.”

The crisis has provoked anger against the British government, with critics drawing comparisons with the assistance given to the banks following the 2008 economic crisis to ask why the steel industry shouldn’t get help.

There were even calls for business secretary Sajid Javid to resign after it emerged he took his daughter with him on the Australia trade trip as the Tata

company board met to decide the future of its British interests in Mumbai.

For Coombs, the union representative, blame does not lie with the factory’s Indian owners.

“It’s hard to blame Tata with the investment they put in over the years,” Coombs said.

“There is a responsibility that’s got to lay at the feet of the Westminster government because they haven’t supported our industry for a long period of time.”

London-based magazine The Economist argued in an analysis that Britain’s historical dominance of steel manufacturing was long gone and that the government should resist demands for a bailout.

“The state’s energy should now be concentrated not on propping up a waning business but on helping steelworkers move onward and upward,” it wrote.

“Spending to keep the plant itself in business would just prolong the inevitable.”

But Coombs insists the industry has a future and that the government should provide “for a limited period, a bit of support”.

“I’m convinced we can get a buyer and we can be positive and we can move forward,” Coombs said.

Daniel Helson, a 20-year-old coke oven labourer, insists that the government

should go further and protect the industry that is the lifeblood of the town where he was born and bred.

“Everyone knows each other outside of work. It’s devastating,” Helson said.

“I think we’ll have to nationalise it. It has to become British Steel again. It has to be British made for British people.”

Meanwhile, is a new special relationship threatening an old staple of British industry? Prime Minister David Cameron’s government faced damaging claims Friday that its push for closer ties with China is holding back efforts to save 15,000 steel jobs.

Industry

The row has spiralled since Wednesday, when India’s Tata Steel said it was selling its UK assets. This threatens the Port Talbot steel works, Wales’s biggest single employer located in an area already hit hard by the decline of heavy industry.

A glut of cheap Chinese imports is a major reason why world steel prices have plunged in recent years — and why Port Talbot is now reportedly losing some £1 million (1.3 million euros, $1.4 million) a day.

Cameron’s government faces accusations that it has blocked higher EU tariffs on Chinese steel as anger grows that an iconic British industry dating back to the 19th century that once provided 40 per-

cent of the world’s supply is now at risk.

Charles de Lusigan, a spokesman for the European Steel Association which represents European steelmakers, said Britain had opposed a European Union plan to bolster defences against cheap Chinese imports.

“They thought that if they blocked the changing and the modernisation of the trade defence instruments, that would give them favours with China,” he told AFP. The body’s head, Axel Eggert, told Friday’s Financial Times that Britain was “the ringleader in a blocking minority of member states” over the EU plan to ignore a key regulation when setting antidumping tariffs.

EU import tariffs on Chinese steel products are low, particularly compared to the United States. The EU duty on Chinese cold-rolled steel currently stands at 16 percent, compared to 236 percent in the US.

Nick Clegg, Cameron’s deputy prime minister in a coalition government until last year, said finance minister George Osborne, architect of closer relations with China and Cameron’s right hand man, had “put his special relationship with China above the UK’s best interests.”

Britain rolled out the red carpet for President Xi Jinping on a state visit last year which included a banquet hosted by Queen Elizabeth II.