Tata Steel axes UK jobs as industry forges ‘greener’ future

AFP | Tokyo                                                            

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Indian-owned Tata Steel is to cut up to 2,800 UK jobs, it announced on Friday, as the industry struggles to finance greener production of the metal.

Tata said it will shut its “two high-emission blast furnaces and coke ovens” in the Welsh town of Port Talbot this year, delivering a blow to a region already hit hard by deindustrialisation.

“Up to 2,800 employees are expected to be potentially affected” by restructuring at the company, including 2,500 roles over the next 18 months, the company outlined.

A company spokesman told AFP the “vast majority” of job losses would be in Port Talbot, the biggest steelworks in the UK, a country where Tata Steel employs about 8,000 staff. The European steel industry is confronting major upheaval.

On Thursday, Italy proposed to place a heavily indebted giant steelworks, majority-owned by ArcelorMittal, under special administration in a bid to secure production and thousands of jobs.

The news of the Tata job cuts was greeted with alarm in the industrial town, where virtually all of the local economy revolves around the steelworks.

“It’s more or less a wasteland now,” lamented Robert Jones, on one of the town’s main streets. “Things will get progressively worse for the town now,” he told AFP.