{"id":19757,"date":"2020-01-09T16:28:02","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T16:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=19757"},"modified":"2020-11-12T12:54:49","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T12:54:49","slug":"liberty-steel-job-losses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=19757","title":{"rendered":"Liberty Steel job losses"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Unite has vowed to defend its members after Liberty Steel announced on Thursday (January 9) that it would be cutting roughly 350 jobs due to what the company called \u00e2\u20ac\u015bchallenging\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 market conditions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The steel firm said that about 282 jobs would be lost at its plants in South Yorkshire, with another 72 to go in Newport, South Wales.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Liberty Steel, which acquired the steel plants it now owns in 2017 after purchasing Tata\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s speciality steels division, said it employs about 2,000 people in South Yorkshire and South Wales.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Liberty Steel CEO Cornelius Louwrens said the UK steel industry \u00e2\u20ac\u015bis facing challenging conditions and we have made the difficult decision that there is a need to reduce the workforce at a handful of locations, in order to make them sustainable for the long-term”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The firm pledged it would work to avoid compulsory redundancies \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a pledge that Unite said it would ensure the company followed through with.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite also called on the government to step in and take action to support the UK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s steel industry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Commenting on the latest job losses, Unite national officer for steel Harish Patel said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis is a bitter blow for the workers concerned and Unite will be ensuring that every opportunity to minimise job losses is properly explored and the commitment to only consider voluntary redundancies is fully honoured.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe announcement of redundancies inevitably creates further uncertainty in the steel industry and makes it more imperative that the government provides genuine and tangible commitments to the UK steel industry, to ensure that it can compete on a level playing field on the global stage,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe need for an effective public sector procurement policy that ensures that UK steel is used on all strategic and infrastructure projects, has never been greater.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The news of Liberty Steel job losses comes just days after Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons group which owns the Port Talbot steelworks, said that his firm would not go on \u00e2\u20ac\u015bfunding losses\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 at the South Wales site.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a joint statement, steels unions including Unite, GMB and Community, voiced anger over Chandrasekaran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comments.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe last few months the company has sought to engage us in sensitive discussions on the future of Tata Steel Europe,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 the statement read.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is extremely disappointing that Tata has sought to influence those discussions by making threats in the media and adding to the concerns of the workforce.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner vowed that Unite would stand by steelworkers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe will never allow @TataSteelUK to simply walk away from Wales or the UK,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he tweeted. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bIn the absence of a government that cares we will do #WhateverItTakes to fight as we always have to defend jobs skills families and communities.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unite has vowed to defend its members after Liberty Steel announced on Thursday (January 9) that it would be cutting roughly 350 jobs due to what the company called \u00e2\u20ac\u015bchallenging\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 market conditions.   The steel firm said that about 282 jobs would be lost at its plants in South Yorkshire, with another 72 to go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1279,269,108],"wps_subtitle":"Liberty Steel announces 350 job losses in South Yorkshire and South Wales","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19757"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19757"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24789,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19757\/revisions\/24789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}