LONDON: Tata Steel is going to announce 1,200 UK job cuts after a week. The company employs about 17,000 people in the UK.
The firm is expected to significantly reduce the workforce at its Scunthorpe steel plant, which employs 3,000 people and is one of the UK’s biggest. Jobs in in Scotland, at Clydebridge in Cambuslang and Dalzell in Motherwell are also vulnerable.
The company declined to confirm the job cuts, but said it had been facing challenges in the UK such as a surge in steel imports, and the strong pound.
Spokesman Tata Steel said, ‘We’ve made a number of structural changes to our UK business over the last months and years to make us more competitive. Like all companies we continue to review the performance of our business.’
The Tata steel works is at the very heart of this community. For generations, the night sky has glowed over Scunthorpe, illuminated by the production of molten metal below.
There’s concern here not only for the plant which dominates the northern Lincolnshire skyline, but for all the businesses and industry which feed into, and rely on Scunthorpe steel. One man told me that without steel, the town would be crippled.
Wives, mothers, brothers and husbands almost everyone in this town knows someone connected to the plant. ‘If this announcement comes true,’ one shopper said, ‘It will be life changing for Scunthorpe.’
