Guest post: Steelwork closures - "The emotional impact cannot be costed"

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We always believed my husband's job at the steelworks was a job for life. And then, a month ago, we received the devastating news that the SSI Redcar plant was to be closed. Paul had been there for four years, but the job was suddenly pulled away from him in a matter of days.

Our daughters, Honor, 4, and Monica, 2, understand little of what has happened - other than that Daddy is around more than normal. Paul and I, meanwhile, have spent the weeks since the news broke in emotional turmoil.

I believe the government could have helped. It didn't. In saying it isn't allowed to help, the government has allowed the plant to close completely. Steel-making will never return to Teeside. The 170-year-old tradition has died. Redcar has lost its soul, the people have lost their pride, the nation has lost an industry to be proud of.

The day before we heard on the news that SSI was to be mothballed, we'd been happily celebrating Honor's birthday. We were together as a family, unaware of how our lives were about to change. When the television news channels started talking about Redcar though the next day, I immediately rang Paul. I wasn't really sure what the term "mothballed" meant. He told me it was likely he would lose his job. If the plant was mothballed, it would be shut down and the staff would be made redundant. However, it would also be left in a state so that a potential buyer could perhaps reopen the site in the future.

My immediate reaction was to burst into tears. Margaret, my colleague, comforted me, in typically English fashion, by offering me a cup of tea. Mondays are always my busiest day of the week. I work as a teaching assistant and immediately after school I usually go to an exercise class followed by choir practice. However, this particular Monday, I needed to go home, be with my family and try to digest the news.

Paul was advised to continue to go to work as normal so returned, as planned, on the Thursday. We were given little information as to what was happening but Paul remained positive and expected to be at work for at least another couple of months covering a consultation and notice period. He also expected to receive a redundancy package of two and a half weeks' wages for each year he had worked at the plant. We could handle this and knew that with our savings we could get us by for at least six months.

But things didn't quite work out like this.

News began to filter through that SSI was going to be put into liquidation. Due to the huge debt the company had run up, it was unable to afford to pay its creditors. Paul's boss told the staff on shift that it was "game over". They were to collect their things and leave the plant. For good. Shock, disbelief, anger and sadness are some of the emotions that Paul and his friends have experienced since that day.

The government has offered an ?80m support package. Out of that around ?30m has been used to pay the redundancies. Paul received the grand total of ?1700, not even a month's wage. That is it. No notice or consultation period.

This leaves us in the desperate position of him needing to find work. Now. We have no idea how to access the money promised for retraining. We cannot get answers, we have been left in the dark along with hundreds of other families.

This week we saw David Cameron in the news wining and dining the Chinese President while taxpayers footed the bill for the ostentatious attempt to broker a deal to build a nuclear power station in Hinkley. An agreement was made for ?6 billion in Chinese investment to build two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point C in Somerset. This confuses me. Surely steel will be needed to build this power station? Surely skilled men will be needed? Our infrastructure is dying. We are relying on foreign input instead of making use of what we have here in our own country. How can this be right?

My family is facing a very uncertain future. We had plans that are now on hold. The financial impact of the SSI closure is huge, but the emotional impact cannot be costed. Paul is desperately searching for work. I am trying to remain positive but feel emotionally drained. Christmas is looming and we will make the best of it, but the one thing we want is for Paul to be employed again and a chance to start rebuilding our lives.

Well looking at the record of one government that had the books balanced for them with plans by 2001, had £trillions to spend and what THEY had to show for it by the crash (and the damage don), VERSUS what the current one (in or out of coalition) is planning/achieving having inherited 1 trillion of National debt and a £153 bil annual government overspend - I suggest that based on those RECORDS to-date, that you are wrong.

But tribal loyalties on both sides tends to be bias and will be as long as I have a hole in my bum mint.

I can only assume you and your family are not and will never be affected by the closures itsme
Let's hope not, the issues local people have is the lack of alternative. How about putting your reports to good use and find out how all these skills can be transferred to enable bill and mortgage payments to be made this month.

Christ it's a bloody mess isn't It .

Fucking tories.

Trouble is in the previous shut downs and production pauses, I believe the coke ovens were kept burning. I believe this is now no longer the case, the coke ovens are cooling, and that makes it prohibitively expensive to restart the plant.

Yep, what's left in there sets solid. They have to pretty much demolish it to stop it from ending up a solid block. There's an article in the gazette from about a month back, detailing the shut down process. I'm not directly affected, but I read that article on the bus and suddenly got something in my eye. It's just so bloody final.
www.gazettelive.co.uk/business/business-news/restarting-blast-furnace-after-days-10086669#ICID=sharebar_twitter

Of course, while scrolling through my twitter for that article, I found the one where Sajid Javid thought Redcar was in the North West. Muppet.

Go back to your political wanking threads Isitmebut. This is real people's livelihoods you're proselytising about.

And this government is never going to latch onto an ideology of moving people out of places like Redcar to places where there's more work. They're too busy seeing to it that people are moved out of expensive areas (ie where there is work) to cheap ones, so they can save a bit on the overall national housing benefit bill.
Of course, both ideas have the same effect - taking people reliant on family for support away from those families.

P.S. HSBC was not bailed out

For once you're right. But the main reason they didn't need a bailout was the cash they were laundering for Mexican drug cartels. For which they received a paltry fine compared to the profit made, and nobody stood trial for it. HSBC is the world's most crooked bank. Even worse than JP Morgan.

ourvye, I hope *Sajid Javid's dick is big enough that he can fuck himself.

Oh and I'm not in any tribe, it would be rather nice to be but I'm not.

~Your posts however seem rather Tory-central.

EnaSharplesHairnet …. Based on your rather sweeping statements at the top of this page, and any attempt to show some balance/facts just HAS to be “Tory-central”, I will then have to assume that if not member of a tribe then you are open minded to why our manufacturing is where it is.

And whether you believe that the HS2,3,4, 5 (whatever) south to north, north east to west train interconnection and the whole Northern Powerhouse investment project will bear any medium to long term growth/prosperity or not – no one can say that with a near bust economy in 2010, the Conservatives (initially with coalition help) through lower taxes and business initiatives - have NOT tried to help every business, small to large.

As mentioned on my first post, the UK did NOT lose 2 million manufacturing jobs in the 2000s by accident, and many of those government inflicted problems on manufacturing have, or are, being addressed - as businesses from the High Street to large companies INCLUDING manufacturing have enough problems competing locally or internationally – and government should NOT make it worse by keep PUTTING UP their costs of doing business, which for some businesses in turbulent times will be the difference between surviving, or failing.

The whole commodity market has been in a slump for a while, with steel due to huge global capacity particularly badly hit and plants losing significant amounts of money year after year, and even when the UK government was swimming in money, it didn’t stop 2 million manufacturing jobs being lost – so I’m not quite sure what more CAN be done over the short term, which is very bad news for everyone affected.

QforCucumber ... Re your "I can only assume you and your family are not and will never be affected by the closures itsme. Let's hope not,"

Many years ago I WAS affected by a closure of sorts, I was too specialised and never recovered, I had to sell my home and I and my family never recovered - but thank you for your concern.

I have to admit I do not read your posts in full Isitme.

In my skimming I've not spotted anything that deviated from support of Conservative policies. You know yourself, of course!

I've a long list of disagreements with recent Labour governments' (non) policies on energy and industry.

Maybe the North East will stop voting for them just as Scotland has.

Hmmm, HS2 isn't coming within 70 miles of Redcar, as it stops at Leeds. Perhaps that's what the Governments think of as the top of the UK. Labour are fairly dominant in the NE, see for example of voting patterns round Redcar. Pretty red!