Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee of the National Assembly for Wales - Future of the steel industry in Wales

Unite’s View.

• The Welsh Government Steel Taskforce and Sub Groups have been extremely helpful and fast acting. However the UK Government still continue with kind words when action is required.

• We still need to challenge the UK Government on their position regarding the desperate need for a UK wide Manufacturing Strategy.

• We are very concerned that the potential buyer process has been stalled, possibly for 8 months, to accommodate talks between Thyssen Krupp and TATA.

· Our fear is that the cost of a possible merger with Thyssen Krupp could be the cessation of steel making at Port Talbot and the loss of these jobs. This is further compounded by the recent Press release that Tata Steel and the unions made an agreement on a job guarantee scheme for workers at the factory in IJmuiden, the unions announced on Tuesday, ANP reports. There will be no compulsory redundancies at Tata Steel Netherlands for a period of five years. Employees who become redundant can be internally redeployed for a period of 21 months. This becomes a permanent position after two months of good performance. Negotiations between Tata Steel and the unions started in February. The unions are concerned that a potential merger between Tata and Germany’s ThyssenKrupp will come at the expense of thousands of jobs. No such negotiation or guarantee has included UK sites.

· TATA have stated that UK Plants may not be part of this merger but we need assurances.

• The delay is causing uncertainty which is causing stress and despair for all TATA workers and their families and a loss of skilled workers from the site at Port Talbot, Trostre and Shotton.

• The reported turn around in profitability at Port Talbot to £20m per month from a stated loss of £1m per day represents either that TATA had got their original sums wrong in a bid to discredit the plant or the beneficial effects of a turn -around plan which was drawn up by the experts within the plant – the workers and management – and which was summarily rejected by the TATA        board.

• Thankfully those experts are still around and Unite is firmly of the opinion that the Excalibur bid is the only one, at this time, which meets with all of our objectives for maintaining primary steel making at the site.

· Unite is not interested in short term fixes – we want the long term preservation of steel manufacturing at Port Talbot and call upon the Welsh and UK Government to tell TATA to stop the stalling and take our members jobs and the UK steel industry seriously.