LONDON: Steelworkers at Britain’s largest steel production plant voted to strike for the first time in around 40 years to protest the planned loss of 2,800 jobs by Indian owner Tata Steel, union officials said Thursday.
The Unite trade union said 1,500 of its members at the south Wales plant and the nearby smaller Newport Llanwern processing plant backed the strike action.
In January, Tata said it would close both blast furnaces at Port Talbot as part of plans to make its unprofitable U.K. operation leaner and greener, replacing them with more environmentally friendly electric arc furnaces.
Unite said Tata has other choices after the union secured a commitment from the main Labour Party opposition that it will invest 3 billion pounds ($3.8 billion) in U.K. steel, compared with the 500 million pounds pledged by the current Conservative government. That potentially matters as Labour is way ahead of the Conservatives in opinion polls ahead of a general election that is expected to take place by the fall.
“In the U.K., Tata’s plans and those of the government reflect the short-term thinking of a clapped-out disinterested government marking time to a general election,” said Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham.
She said the vote in favor of striking happened despite threats from Tata that enhanced redundancy packages would be withdrawn if workers went on strike.
Tata has said that its plans to switch from coal-fired blast furnaces to an electric arc furnace, which produces steel from scrap metal, needs fewer workers and that 2,500 jobs will go by the middle of next year, with a further 300 at longer-term risk. Both blast furnaces are due to be shut this year, with the new electric furnace installed by 2027.
