To think its a no brainer to renationalise British Steel

[feellikeahugefailure]

We need steel, it's just being killed by cheap dumping. Would be foolish to let it go under and not produce any steel in the country.

Also the mistakes with remploy show that it will probably cost more in benefits if the business close. Not to mention more long term affects on mental health from people that can't ever get back into work.

Would decimate the local area, not just the workers but the knock on affect of the workers not spending their money in the local area. One pound earnt could be spent 10 times.

Its not that there is no benefit. Anyone who has seen what happens to the local economy after mass layoffs wouldnt use that argument. It has a knock on effect for decades.

There could maybe be alternative industries that could be put there.

I wonder if the same people calling for nationalisation feel the government is doing a good job of running the country ? If not, I'd be curious as to why they think the government could run a steelworks better than Tata ?

Generally, the government should not be running (or trying to) run businesses - they're not very good at it.

that we will not be losing the ability to make high grade steel (which we actually might)

No we won't. Do you have any idea of the industry surrounding high cost steel products? It doesn't just involve industry, it involves Universities, research centres, the public sector. We attract people here from all over the world to work in that industry because we're the most technologically advanced. This isn't going to disappear because junk steel production that didn't even exist in this country 10-15 years ago is mothballed.

But Bill the reality is much more like 15,000 jobs in the steel industry with the subsequent multiplier effect causing regional decline.

"But as the left wing has proved time and again they couldn't give two shits if working class jobs are culled or their wages trashed unless those people are in unions and pay a portion of their salary to the Labour Party."

I've never come across this attitude with the left wing or the Labour party, I have though come across the attitude from the other side that as long as it makes a particular set of people money then its fine. Sod everybody else.

All the information I've read so far Bill says that a lot of the higher grade Tata production centres are at risk too, because Tata would rather see them shut than compete with their Dutch base.

Also, the problem with governments running business not being very good... I wouldn't say many of our businesses are actually any good.

When we look at the previously nationalised and now privatised industries we find large amounts of profits being made, large salaries being taken out etc, but when it comes in to investment private industry stand with their hand out and ask for tax breaks and subsidies in order to do it. There are infinate examples.

Also recent nationalisations tend to have been more successful, if temporary, take the East Coast Mainline for one.

Its not that there is no benefit. Anyone who has seen what happens to the local economy after mass layoffs wouldnt use that argument. It has a knock on effect for decades.

It's not a benefit worth having. There are different benefits which can be had much more cheaply, for example retraining or offering different businesses incentives to open in the area.

It really depends on whether you think each individual employee is worth a £100k per year subsidy to be kept in their job. Which I don't really think anyone could seriously claim was either justified or sustainable. Nor would it be fair on other people in less romanticised industries who lose their jobs and don't get a fraction of that investment.

Where I worked we had a refurbishment project about 12 years ago. Wasn't huge, but some steels needed to be made for a supporting structure. We had to get the steel from China. It was nothing to do with cost, actually, but availability. Our architect and builder couldn't find a company in this country who could make what we needed within the timeframe required - and it wasn't like we wanted it tomorrow, we were talking many months ahead and not a skyscraper. So it's not just about cost but actually being able to provide the service.

Also, the problem with governments running business not being very good... I wouldn't say many of our businesses are actually any good.

And yet, they stay in business.

I did qualify myself, and said "generally".

The bottom line, is any business exists to make money. All else is frippery. What's the point of Greggs ? Perfect the baking process ? Design the perfect cupcake ? Establish a Greggs in every town, so the board can play dot-the-dot at the AGM ?
Or to deliver a return to it's shareholders (aka "making money") ?

Some businesses are so special that their need to make money is exceeded by their value to the country. In which case they should be run by the state. I'm not sure a case has been made for the steel industry to be one such industry. I appreciate the warnings about ships and defence. However, I suspect long term strategic thinking is pointing away from industrial war (for want of a better phrase) and moving more into knowledge war. After all, no matter how many warships you can sail to the UK (and has anyone suggested we are at risk of invasion ? I'm not really interested in the UK sending soldiers abroad to other countries), if they can be disabled and disarmed by someone in a back office in Brighton, then the question of tonnes of steel is moot.

"It really depends on whether you think each individual employee is worth a £100k per year subsidy to be kept in their job"

What do the losses at RBS and Lloyds come to again? What do those at Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley etc come to? How much is spent on train subsidies that find its way to share holders via dividends? How much are we spending on Hinkley Point and guarenteeing energy prices at?

I think the cost argument is flawed Bill

When we look at the previously nationalised and now privatised industries we find large amounts of profits being made

rather a good argument for privatisation then. Unless they were making huge profits before privatisation ?

"And yet, they stay in business."

Yet many are protected by EU and UK law, many are protected by subsidy, many have been protected by low interest rates and QE.

If its ok to spend £375 bn shoring up the banks in 5 years I don't see why its not ok to back British Steel. Sorry.

Especially as backing our steel industry may be beneficial, most of QE stayed on banks balance sheets as cash or got pumped into the stock market for short term high risk gain.

Vested interests are killing off the steel industry, not costs or being good at business.

Costs are genuinely killing of the low value steel industry - not sure why you are convinced the high value plants will also close. Tata want to sell the lot and they will, with govt taking over the pension scheme and a limited number of job losses in Port Talbot.
Baling out the banks (an action taken by the Left), was to prevent a global financial meltdown which would have crippled us.
Not getting rid of the people in charge of the banks at the time of the crisis was a (Labour) error, not corrected by the current govt. QE was also an error in the way it was handled, but again over half of QE was under a left wing government.

Nationalisation is also problematic because the govt is seen as having unlimited funds and short-term populist aims - look at the funding of Kid's Company.
Unions and employee groups realise that a private investor can only fund payrises etc if it is profitable, so temper wage demands. This is the reason unions tend to only have power in the public sector because too many private sector employees have lost jobs historically due to excessive historic union demands.

Thank you Lurked101 and LeaveTheRoundAbout. It was my first. Bit apprehensive, but I feel so strongly about what's happening there, I just had to. I'm was a post from my heart.

Just to add (in case some people are still unaware), if the works closes, it's not just the 4000+ plant jobs going. And it won't just be Port Talbot affected, but much of the surrounding area as far east as Newport and many of the Valleys. The press never reported on the 3000 jobs that have been lost from contractors over the last few years. All the town centres in South Wales are now (like many town centres I suppose), like ghost towns. All we need is some tumbleweed blowing around and we could be in one of those deserted-after-the-gold-rush Western towns. There seems to be nothing but charity shops and phone shops. The rest are boarded up. Though the out-of-town centres seem to be holding their heads above water. I suspect this is due to incentives to fill units as after 6 months or a year, even the big names close up and move on.

All the heavy industries have mainly gone now, and along with them the "well" paid jobs. Although I consider myself a feminist and could give Joan Collins' character a run for her money back in the Dynasty days, I do believe that it's important that men that are brought up in the hard, heavy industries should stay in jobs like this. For generations it has been expected that sons follow their fathers into industry. When you look at communities that have lost their industries (I'm now living in Wales, so I'm seeing Welsh mining and steel communities specifically), you see a whole generation of young men that have never worked. Many have tried, but zero hour contracts in call centres and other low-paid work seems to have killed most of the work ethic in all but the lucky ones.

I notice the new Living Wage adverts being heralded on telly. Big whoop. It'll just mean more zero hour contracts and enterprising employers looking for a different way to pay their employees less. If someone does actually take over the works, I'd imagine new contracts being drawn up will not exactly pay these men what they're worth - which, by the way, is currently less than my friend gets working for ATOS in Cardiff for answering phones and working 9-5. And he gets BUPA, too.

I watch these men walking/cycling/driving past my office, or coming in mid shift to query something and feel ashamed for my own wage. Some are lucky and have a job that isn't in too bad a part of the plant. Others are soaked to the skin with sweat, grubby with the dust and debris of where they are in the plant. Many of the older men have a chronic cough from the toxic dust of their department.

I think they're worth DOUBLE their pay.

Back to the work ethic. TATA (and the previous owners) have an excellent sick package to be fair to them. I obviously see some men take advantage of the policy, but the VAST majority are never on the sick, even though they get full pay for the first 6 months. These men WORK for their pay. There are grumbles (especially about the current direct management - can't blame them there), but they're generally a cheerful bunch who will always have a joke and laugh with us. But each and every one who has worked there more than a year or two looks bone tired. I've been taken round the plant and seen the conditions for myself and I don't know how they manage to keep at it day after day.

But, there you go. They appreciate they have a better life with the plant than without. Until recently, HR had a policy of keeping it in the family. Fathers would bring their sons and other family members in - much like my family. However, now an agency has taken over and, as far as I have so far noticed (and I'm pretty observant), the men they take on have been unsuitable. Some have taken one look at the department they're to work in and done a runner (a 30-tonne cauldron of 1500 degree molten steel hovering above your head, ready to be poured anyone?).

At least family members know what the score is. It's not a job for everyone. You need to be brave to work in many areas of the plant. And there is NO shirking. If you're genuinely ill, the camaraderie of the "boys" will keep you covered. The slower ones are shown patience until they get it. Laziness is generally not well-tolerated by work-mates. They ALL pull together. It's very close-knit even if you don't live in Port Talbot. If there's a leaving do or a funeral, the shift members will travel to attend. It's a kind of respect thing. The film about Paul Potts showed the worst part of that community, but not the big-heartedness of the men. If someone is ill and they're on a pay cut, there'll be a big whip round. Same goes with their families. They do in general support each other.

It's a strange thing to see from a female point of view. They're all manly men, but the care they have for their workmates is as deep as it goes.

One case I've been dealing with has had the department manager insist that an agency worker still come in to work and sit around just watching others work as he has a broken arm and is unable to do his job. The agency know the score and have offered to send someone else, but by the time they train them up, his arm will be healed. The workers in the department see money literally being burned by keeping him there, doing nothing and are willing and already have picked up the slack to cover him. What the don't understand is why the hell this guy is being paid full pay to sit there doing nothing. Even the agency don't understand this.

There is so much that could be done to turn this business around. Get rid of employees that don't actually do anything productive (yes, managers who spend most of the time sleeping in your offices when you're paid to work - the unlucky ones that actually come in on a night shift as opposed to the ones that are paid the premium shift allowance and are only in on days, I'm speaking to you. How do you have the gall to take the money for job your "mate" created for you?). Oh, and the managers who hang around our offices on days, flirting with the youngsters or asking the oldies to be a luv and get a coffee? Hang your heads in shame. The people who though it would be a good idea to use an agency to source staff at more than twice the cost? Keep your ideas to yourself. The old family and friends policy got the plant men that aren't work-shy or chocolate teapot useless.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be outed with my posts as I'm pretty vocal about things I see that make no financial (or otherwise) sense. Might have been an idea not to have mentioned my family links, too. But if someone in charge, with an iota of common sense reads it and acts, or if someone else sees it and decides to take a punt on the plant and wants a few ideas on how NOT to run it into the ground, my job (for however long I now have it - and if I get the push before it closes), will be worth it. I no longer have a family that I am financially responsible for and, as sexist as it sounds, I can get a job in a call centre or as a cleaner or any other myriad of lower paid jobs and not feel emasculated. Unlike the majority of these hard-working men.

Okay, I'm hogging this thread now. I'll leave it at that and just hope that anyone else reading will look further than the propaganda and rubbish our government feeds us and will sign any and all petitions and support the steel industry. The UK actually does need industry - and a lot more than we currently have. We need a whole new outlook to the way Britain works. But that's a whole other thread and I'll spare you all my thoughts on politics/economics as I just look at things I can see going wrong that would just take common sense and the right people in charge to fix.

Thank you all again for the support that is being shown, not just for Port Talbot, but for all of TATA's employees and the jobs and people directly and indirectly affected by the closures. Too many jobs have already been lost and lives and livelihoods affected.

Just another post from my heart.

Carol the latest info says that Tata are actually just going through the motions with the sale and may close the entire operation rather than selling to a firm that will compete with the Dutch plant.

I agree that the banks were necessary to bail out, in fact internationally Gordon Brown's plans were adopted and he was lauded for it (so much for being stupid eh).

When you discuss unions and the private sector you seem to leave out the fact that in many firms there are significant union presences, and when unions are involved in decision making procesess such as in Germany that it works quite well. We have to be more objective about trade unionism than the current/previous conservative governments, they are worthwhile.

Nationalise for a time, let the government restructure and invest and sell on in future, leave it to Tata and we will be severely weakened.

hi. Thanks fir your 2nd equally as informative post.

It sounds as though the management is ripe for pruning and restructuring. I noticed in my own career, the more remote a location the more difficult it was to attract the managerial talent you need and that's when complacency and poor practices flourish

I hope you jobs are saved. I always look out for the steel works on my way to Pembrokeshire

When unions work with management, such as often in Germany, it can work well (although Siemens was a bit dubious), and did at JCB in 2009 when the union and management agreed a 4 day week to save redundancies.
However, unions in this country do not have a good record of working with management.

Caroldecker - did you read the bit in my admittedly long-winded post about the older men wanting to leave being kept on and the younger ones with families being let go? Don't suppose you did. You seem to have some idea that the Port Talbot workers collect their gold watches and large pensions at 55 and waltz off to a carefree retirement. This is a pension that each and every one of them have paid into all their lives from their wages. As well as continuing to pay their N.I. contributions that go towards helping others as well as themselves. The younger men who have been laid off already will not be able to access their pension - and I doubt there will be anything left for them to recoup their original payments by the time they are of an age to collect.

Hate to burst your bubble but they don't. The workers that have taken a lot of sick are pensioned off at 55+ because it is uneconomic to keep them in work. These are the same guys I see at my surgery, often bent in pain or hardly able to breathe due to workplace injuries and/or dreadful working conditions.

Talking of surgeries... BillSykes - are you honestly that dense that you think that the money saved would actually GO to hospitals and schools? Whatever you are on, I want some! Actually you're more than deluded if you can't see the way the NHS is slowly being privatised and before much longer if a "normal" person doesn't have their own private insurance, they're going to be put off/forgotten about or any other sneaky-but-deliberate way precluded from accessing what is left of the NHS.

Oddly enough, before I started at TATA I worked at a hospital (definitely outing myself now, but so incensed by that comment I have to post). I was high in admin, not nursing, but from that point of view I saw how much was spent, yet again, on management and NOT where it should be spent - on the nursing staff. Any budget increase was shamefully handled. Again, management positions being miraculously filled by unsuitable people who knew nothing about the NHS and who spent most of their time asking us underlings to do their jobs for them. An awful lot of bitterness and unhappiness abounded and was one of the reasons I left. I was working unpaid until 9pm most nights, doing someone else's job (who was paid double my wage and more), then being left to take the flack if I made as much as a simple spelling mistake. I took a fortnight off with pneumonia and was treated like a leper when I returned as I'd left two senior managers in the shit (i.e. having to do their own jobs). I just could not take being put upon or the attitude any longer.

And don't get me started about contractors. Back-handers were expected or somehow, a contract would be given to a company that would have a link to our managers somewhere along the line.

It's all so dirty. It needs to be exposed (to be fair, some have been), but mostly, this "management and their friends" culture needs to be stopped. In all walks from the steel works to the NHS. I can't speak for the educations system as I've never worked in it, but the way the NHS works (or rather, how it doesn't unless the right backs are scratched), I do have knowledge of.

It's so depressing being here and getting involved in a debate where a few people are obviously secure enough in their own little worlds that they can show no compassion (or see common sense about the way things are being run). It's not exactly like it's THEIR money. Or are they happy knowing that once it closes, that's it for many. thousands of jobs can't just be created from nowhere. It's not even just the steel workers directly, but their families and local businesses, too. Many people will be affected by mental health issues, adding to the strain of the NHS and benefits system.

But why would that matter to the lucky few? So what if (a LOT) more people go from being on the dole and forced into jobs that pay minimum wage onto sickness benefits? After all, with all the sanctions these days, they're unlikely to get far going down that road are they? So what if families split under the strain and the children start suffering? How proud these people must be that they can happily pass judgement on a plant that has produced steel for several generations and just sweep it under the carpet like that. Easy.

Wow, if I had that kind of conscience, I'd have arse-licked my way to the top of the tree in the NHS and be just like them.

Back to steel - yesterday they produced high grade silicon steel. Difficult to make and not many plants have the capabilities to do so. Amazing when the men manage to produce it on out-dated, patched together equipment. As for importing the raw materials, TATA have refused two shiploads of iron ore recently. However, there is a lot of scrap still at the plant. If they were given the chance, they could run almost entirely on scrap. Every Heinz tin in the UK could be re-used IN the UK. Something to be proud of in my books. Something to think about when it comes to climate change. I bet the Chinese don't consider such things when they cause life-threatening pollution that in un-checked by the government.

If they close the plant now it won't be simple to get it back online. It will cost the government Billions if TATA just abandon it as the site is toxic. Of course, they could just leave it as it is. A reminder of a HUGE cock up this government has made.

If they keep it open, reduce the emissions tax until the plant can get new equipment online that will make it self-sufficient (and reduce emissions to such a low it would be the pride of steel-making world-wide), and reduce the energy costs until these changes are implemented, it would be a big help to any would-be buyer. It WOULD have been a HUGE help to TATA when suggested a few years ago when these plans were announced. If they'd had the help they asked for then, we almost certainly would NOT be in this position now.

Port Talbot has the capability to produce just about any grade of steel needed and rolls imported steel as well as plant-produced. It could be a good business if run properly. I have reservations about the Liberty owners taking over, though. That, I believe is frying pan to fire. They have no problem laying off their employees at the drop of a hat whenever things go quiet. I don't know what's worse - knowing you have to go out and get a new, permanent low-paid job or stick with a company that tells you to go home with no notice at all, then expects you back in when work rolls in, maybe months later. That kind of strain is good for no one. I also think that they will cherry pick the site. Better than nothing, you could say, but as I keep banging on, it would be an awful waste of potential.

By the way. That old chestnut, the union argument. It doesn't cut it. There are too many different unions here and sometimes they don't have the same agenda. Unions have been involved in many talks about pensions and working conditions over the years, most having been unsuccessful. The men have given up more and more over the years, promises of no job losses being the reason. All to no avail.

I'm still hoping against hope that it'll carry on. It's a part of British pride and history and can still be. A new, improved steel works. It would be nice. Hard work, but nice.

There are faults on both sides yes, but in many cases the unions have been correct about many things, as much as I loathe Scargill he was right about the plan to close all the mines for example. In the 70s when we had rampant inflation many of the strikes were regarding pay awards that were well under inflation, whilst management got well paid. The unions negotiated good deals for the car industry too in 2009.

It comes back to the stakeholder argument, the idea that unions are always anti business, come back to the point of who we run businesses for. The current situation where we maximise shareholder value actually is not good because of the short time a shareholder usually owns stock. This leads to management making decisions which generally suit short term goals of pay awards and bonuses. We should be thinking of unions as very valuable stakeholders because they have the long term interests of companies and institutions at heart.

For example, the current move to acadmisation in schools has the partial goal of eliminating unions and collective bargaining. Teachers are repetedly degraded in the press and are even worse is applied when they strike. But what do the unions strike to do? Improve terms and conditions.. What has changed in the last 5 years? Terms and conditions have worsened, and oh blimey we have a rectuitment and retention crisis, were the unions wrong after all?

Thank you, Springing.

It's something I was in awe of while passing as a child. And I still am. Even though I'm on site, I find myself detouring from the M4 to the new road that passes almost through the works. If I'm lucky I can see the metal being poured from the blast furnaces (the men working there are so brave - it really is like hell on earth). I also ALWAYS look at the big building towards Cardiff with the 6 square chimneys - the casters where the end steel grades are poured into giant slabs. The smoke tells me if it's One, Two or Three casting (or multiple).

It's a fascinating/frightening/horrifying/awesome place.

ItsAllDyingOut

My grandfather was an iron mouldier in a foundry up north. He died very young. We still use the iron griddle he cast when we're making pancakes.

I second everything you said about the poor, nepotistic management that seems to permeate our public services and, to some extent, your current employer. I've seen it a first hand which is why I would never support any increase in taxes to support the NHS or education or any of the other organisation in which waste is rampant and highly paid executives can't make a decision without calling in management consultants go guide them. They are all useless.

I do however feel that we must retain our ability to make virgin steel. It's as much part of our defence strategy as of our economic strategy ( if we had one, which I am starting to think we haven't ).

Lurked - you are right.

I don't have experience with the education system, but I do know that without them in the works, conditions would be much worse.

I'm not a huge fan of the Unions in general (nor do I actually know a great deal about them other than their history which has made them unwanted by management), but I do know that they have helped families of men injured at work and helped to keep conditions a bit better than sub-human. They've fought to keep necessary jobs in the plant, despite costs being cut to the bone.

Terms and conditions have worsened, though. If education is anything like the NHS frontliners will get hit, while management will sit pretty.

There is something seriously wrong with the people in charge of this country that they can't see what's happening in education, NHS and private industry. Blame the unions - it's their fault.

Someone please explain to me how the nose-dive this country appears in general to be talking is the fault of the unions?

Oh, and if I hear one more word about the UK being a happier place than ever before, they should have been sitting in my GP surgery last Friday where people have to bombard reception to get appointments at the end of the month, before they all go. At which point, we all have to wait until the beginning of the next month to try to get an appointment for the end of the following one. But if we pay a PRIVATE system, we can get a same-day appointment. But that again is another thread.

Springing - we think alike.

My grandfather also died young. My mum used to tell me how she'd fan him with newspaper in an effort to get air into his lungs. He was a coal miner. He died aged 52 of pneumoconiosis, after 52 years at the coal face.

In that way, I'm glad the mines have closed. But if you speak to many ex-miners here they will all say best days of their lives. We have open cast mining locally, but now, despite it being top grade coal, imported coal (including Chinese) is making it uneconomical to continue. I suspect these will close before all the coal is mined, putting more men on the dole.

Very depressing.

Oh, and as an ex-Greenham Common protester, I used to be terrified of being nuked. I also had parents that worked during the second World War, my dad in the RAF and my mum in the munitions factory near Cheltenham. My grandmother nursed during the first World War while my grandfather mined coal. I was brought up on a diet of how important the defence and self-sufficiency of our little island is.

Now, I just think before long there will be so few good jobs and such general low morale, led by such stupid people defence won't be needed. We'll either be nuked by madmen, poisoned by other madmen or simply welcome the enemy in for a nice friendly takeover.

I need to lay off the wine right now. I'm getting even more depressed.

Can I just say springing, I've worked in both private industry and public services and found the nepotism was far more common in private rather than public.

I also think that the private sector "efficiency" points are rather over blown in comparison in public sector inefficiency, genuinely the only time I've ever experienced "management consultants" in the public sector they were foisted on us by central government and were nowhere near worth the money they were paid, it was the same when we had them in private industry years ago, someone somewhere needs their decision justifying with an independent report and so it must be thus.