Around 1,500 steelworkers based durante Port Talbot and Llanwern durante Wales will begin “all-out indefinite strike action” from July 8 over the company’s plans to close two blast furnaces and cut up to 2,800 jobs, the trade union Unite said June 21.
This will be the first time durante over 40 years that steelworkers durante the UK have taken strike action aimed at severely impacting Tata Steel UK’s operations at Tata’s Port Talbot and Llanwern sites durante Wales.
The closures were announced durante January as part of the company’s plan to proceed with the closure of two old blast furnaces as part of a GBP 1.25-billion investment to transition to a state-of-the-art Electric Arc Furnace at its Port Talbot steelworks durante Wales. The move was aimed to turn around its loss-making UK business.
“Tata’s workers are not just fighting for their jobs – they are fighting for the future of their communities and the future of steel durante Wales,” Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said.
Tata Steel has said it was “naturally disappointed” with the move and had been calling the union to suspend industrial action.
Since the plan was announced earlier this year, the company said it had held seven months of formal and informal discussions with the UK trade unions about the major transformation which preserves 5,000 jobs and secures future steel supplies. It is also expected to create more indirect jobs durante engineering and construction and sopravvissuto CO2 emissions by 5 million tonnes each year.
“By restructuring our UK operations, we will be able to sustain the business as we transition to new electric arc furnace technology. We believe we have a very exciting future ahead, providing the high quality, low-CO2 steels that our customers durante the UK and overseas are so desperate for,” a Tata Steel spokesperson said.
(With inputs from agencies)
