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Row over jobs at UK’s largest remaining steelworks in Port Talbot highlights challenges of moving to a fossil fuel-free future
- British unions seek job security in green transition
- Struggling Port Talbot steelworks set to decarbonise
- Unions want broader net zero jobs strategy
LONDON – Beneath the sky-scraping smokestacks rising over the Welsh town of Port Talbot, a battle is raging over the future of jobs in Britain’s largest remaining steelworks as it moves to cut losses and slash planet-heating emissions.
One of the key drivers of this dispute between trade unions and India’s Tata Steel, which runs the steelworks, is the question of how best to future-proof jobs as fossil fuel-dependent industries move to decarbonise.
“Every market you look at is going green, steel has got to get there as well,” said Jason Wyatt, who has worked as an electrical engineer for two decades at Tata Steel.
Decarbonising steel production is key to achieving global net-zero emission targets – steel production accounts for about 8% of global carbon emissions and about 30% of emissions from industry, and the sector is the major consumer of coal.
The switch to electric steelmaking in Port Talbot is expected to cut Britain’s carbon emissions by 1.5% as the coal-fired plant is the country’s biggest single carbon emitter.
But the switch will also mean job losses, and unions are pushing for alternative strategies that facilitate decarbonisation while ensuring that jobs stay in the UK.
Beyond the Welsh borders, this battle is also playing out as unions representing workers in the oil and gas, automotive and manufacturing industries also push for a just transition. And sometimes they are forging alliances with environmentalists to push this agenda.
“The people that work (in these industries) have the expertise and experience to be the ones who know how to lead the transition,” said Rosie Hampton, just transition campaigner at Friends of the Earth.
In 2021, Unite and GMB worked with environmental and community activists to secure a memorandum of understanding with Rolls Royce to keep open three manufacturing plants that faced closure and secure training to help transition to zero-carbon technologies.
Unions representing offshore oil and gas workers in Scotland worked with climate campaigners at Friends of the Earth to produce an industrial plan with 10 key demands linked to the energy transition.
In Germany, transport workers staged joint protests and walkouts with climate activists in February to demand better investment in public transport.
David Whyte, a climate justice expert at Queen Mary University of London, said unions had a key role to play in managing the transition to a fossil fuel-free future by pushing for job protection and stability.
“If you want to have a transition, you need a workforce that is properly trained and that is not precarious,” said Whyte.
A person crosses a footbridge with Tata Steel Port Talbot steel production plant seen behind, ahead of its planned transition from blast furnace to electric arc furnaces, at Port Talbot, Wales, Britain, March 11, 2024. REUTERS/Toby Melville
A person crosses a footbridge with Tata Steel Port Talbot steel production plant seen behind, ahead of its planned transition from blast furnace to electric arc furnaces, at Port Talbot, Wales, Britain, March 11, 2024. REUTERS/Toby Melville
Steel ‘fit for the future’
In Port Talbot, the transition to cleaner forms of steelmaking is also driven by the need to reduce costs – Tata Steel says the plant is losing around 1 million pounds ($1.27 million) a day.
The company said in January that it would close its two blast furnaces by the end of this year and switch to electric arc furnaces, that require fewer workers to operate.
The move, which is backed by 500 million pounds ($633 million) of government money, will see the loss of up to 2,800 jobs.
But workers want a slower transition that would safeguard jobs and unions have proposed industrial strategies along these lines. Unite, one of the unions representing the workforce, started industrial action on June 18 to protest the job losses.
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said in a statement last week that Tata’s workers were taking action because they believed jobs could be retained during the transition to green steel.
Two other unions, GMB and Community, have voted for industrial action but have not announced dates.
The Unite union has drafted ‘A Workers’ Plan for Port Talbot’ that advocates keeping one blast furnace online while the other is retired. Then, more electrical furnaces and other cleaner manufacturing methods could be introduced.
It argues that doing so would help reduce reliance on imported steel, keep jobs, bolster production and create new opportunities for making wind turbines and batteries.
“The win for me is not just preserving the steel industry, but having a steel industry that is fit for the future,” said Wyatt, who is a member of Unite.
A similar two-phase plan jointly proposed by Community and GMB was rejected by Tata in April.
Tata said that joint union plan would cost at least an additional 1.6 billion pounds and be risky.
“It creates some safety issues to try and build an arc furnace whilst you’re still operating a steel plant,” a Tata Steel UK spokesperson told Context.
Tata Steel workers and supporters protest against the Indian company’s decision to potentially close its blast furnaces in Port Talbot, Wales, near the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain, January 31, 2024. REUTERS/Toby Melville
Tata Steel workers and supporters protest against the Indian company’s decision to potentially close its blast furnaces in Port Talbot, Wales, near the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain, January 31, 2024. REUTERS/Toby Melville
Decarbonise to protect jobs
A further complication is that Britain is holding a general election on July 4 and polls suggest that the main opposition Labour Party will win power from the governing Conservative Party, which has been running the country for 14 years.
Labour has promised 3 billion pounds for a “green steel fund”, including the 500 million for the electric arc furnace in Port Talbot, but party members have also called on Tata not to make any irreversible decisions before the July vote.
Last week, Tata Steel issued a statement to answer UK media reports casting doubt on government financial support and said it was committed to closing the blast furnaces.
Decarbonisation is also a competitive issue. Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) said in a report last September that 800,000 jobs in sectors like steel and car manufacturing could be lost to countries offering higher climate subsidies and investment in clean infrastructure.
The union said Britain needed to implement a comprehensive clean industry strategy like U.S. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
The IRA’s clean energy and climate provisions have created more than 170,000 jobs and could add a further 1.5 million jobs over the next decade, according to the White House.
“By decarbonising (jobs) now, we’ll keep them here,” said Mika Minio-Paluello, policy lead at the TUC.
Ensuring workers are equipped with skills for the transition to clean energy is essential to creating a robust net-zero industrial strategy, said Laith Whitwham, policy adviser at climate think-tank E3G.
“If we don’t seize the opportunity of net zero there’s a real risk that some of these sectors will entirely disappear in the UK, and that will be a much worse position than we’re currently in,” said Whitwham.
($1 = 0.7893 pounds)
(Reporting by Beatrice Tridimas; Editing by Clar Ni Chonghaile.)
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