A formal announcement that thousands of job losses will start at Tata's Port Talbot plant this year is expected this morning. Reports emerged on Thursday after a meeting between unions and Tata bosses in London that the Indian-owned steel giant has rejected a union proposal to carry out its planned transformation to green steel manufacturing in a slower, less painful way.
The steel giant is expected to announce later this morning, after it has issued a notice to the Indian stock exchange, that it will press ahead with plans to close blast furnaces at its biggest plant this year, threatening more than 3,000 jobs across Tata's operations in Wales and the rest of the UK. Some of the job losses are expected to start in April with the bulk having taken place by September this year, according to BBC reports.
It is understood all parts of Tata's UK operation could be impacted, from those employed at works to those in admin roles. Tata has works in Wales at Trostre in Llanelli, Llanwern in Newport, Catnic in Caerphilly, Shotton in Deeside and the largest part of its workforce at Port Talbot. There are distribution centres elsewhere in the UK and development facilities, including in Swansea as well as works in Hartlepool, Corby and Wednesfield.
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The Financial Times today reported that the job losses figure will be around 2,800 as part a major restructuring of its UK operations. However, there will be no formal announcement by Tata until Friday lunchtime and unions have said they will speak to their members first before publicly announcing more detail.
We understand the steel giant has told unions today it will go ahead with its own plan to close the blast furnaces at the site and replace them with electric arc furnaces. They are greener, but require fewer staff and it is expected to lead to mass redundancies at the Port Talbot plant and more elsewhere in the supply chain.
The current method of steel production, which involves making new steel in blast furnaces, is set to end and the company announced in September a plan to change to a new type of furnace which uses renewable electricity rather than fossil fuels to power the melting of scrap steel.
The company is planning to spend £1.25bn on the transformation and the UK Government said it would give a £500m subsidy towards the switch. However recycling steel requires far fewer workers and the steel is expected to have a small range of end uses meaning that unions say 3,000 fewer workers across Tata's sites will be needed.
Unions had been urging Tata to stagger the transformation over a decade to protect jobs and also to investigate alternative forms of green steel production apart from electric arc furnaces. They argue that under their plan, the reduction in the workforce could be achieved more painlessly without compulsory redundancies.
Unions worked with industry experts Syndex to come up with an alternative plan which they said would reduce the impact on jobs. Initially backed by GMB, Community and Unite, Unite later withdrew its support. It is the proposals by Community and the GMB being considered. You can read those in full here.
Their plan would protect more than 2,300 jobs over a decade and would see no compulsory redundancies at Port Talbot as blast furnace number four would continue to run until the end of its life-cycle in 2032, while one small electric arc furnace and either a second or open slag bath furnace are built.
We'll bring live updates from today:
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2024-01-19 07:53:18Z
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