Steelmaker Corus slashes jobs
Steelmaker Corus is cutting more than 2,000 jobs at UK plants including Teesside, Scunthorpe and Rotherham.
Around 2,045 jobs are at risk, some 1,500 of these are in the company’s production facilities: about 800 at the engineering steels sites, mainly Rotherham and Stocksbridge; about 370 in Corus Tubes in the UK and the Netherlands, and about 375 at downstream rolling and finishing plants in Teesside and Scotland.
The company is also opening consultations on 500 white-collar jobs throughout the Corus Long Products division, the majority at Scunthorpe.
Owned by Indian conglomerate, Tata, Corus said it was responding to a continued downturn in trade.
Corus CEO Kirby Adams said: “We understand the difficulties these job losses are likely to cause our employees and their families. Any recovery in Europe appears to be some time off, so it is vital that we take this proportionate and responsible action now. We have to achieve long-term, sustainable competitiveness in a global and over-supplied steel market and are determined to do so by focusing on the quality of the products and services we offer our customers.”
Union, Unite said it is doing everything it can to support the Corus workers.
Unite’s national officer, John Rowse said: “We will be having urgent discussions with the company on this latest announcement but we cannot keep moving from crisis to crisis, its time for the government to step-up and act. Whilst the circumstances of this latest announcement is due to the impact of the global crisis, interim solutions have to be local to the UK. The situation for Corus and British manufacturing is too serious to stand idly by. Unless there is urgent support from the UK government, British manufacturing will come out of recession hamstrung and unable to compete in the world economy.
“Unite will be doing everything possible to support its members. Our priority is to minimise redundancies but unless there is action from the government to support British manufacturing we will continue to see skilled jobs wither on the vine.”
Corus supply steel to the aerospace, automotive and construction industries and have been badly affected by the global recession, which has seen demand from its main markets dwindle.
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