steel: jobs slashed as debts mount
WORKERS, APRIL 2003 ISSUE
THE 1999 SHOTGUN MARRIAGE between British Steel and the Dutch Hoogovens metals conglomerate to create Corus now moves towards bloody divorce. An estimated 3,000 British steelworkers’ jobs are to be slashed as Corus’s international debts take the company towards bankruptcy.
The job losses and potential collapse of Corus have nothing to do with anything British steelworkers have done. They are a direct result of Corus’s management attempting a strategy of international growth, take-over and market domination that has gone spectacularly wrong.
Corus management has ‘lost’ the company over £2 billion in the last three years. Workers pay for this in lost jobs, loss of livelihood and closed communities. Scunthorpe (4,000), Redcar (3,000) and Port Talbot (3,000) all now face the potential of closure.
One major plant closure would meet the employer’s reduction strategy. But there is nothing to stop the closures escalating. The British steel wing of Corus is highly integrated as a result of streamlining and previous closures during the last 30 years.
Previous closures have seen whole steel towns eliminated – Shotton, Corby, etc. In 1967, 268,000 workers were employed in steel manufacturing. By 2003 this had dropped to 50,000. Corus employs 25,000 workers and produces 11 out of the 13 million tonnes of steel the British market uses.
From such a dominant position in the British market – over 90% of British production, then the competency or sheer incompetency of Corus management must be questioned. The list of bizarre achievements is growing. A board chairman nicknamed ‘The Butcher’; a now early-retiring chief executive nicknamed ‘Dr Death’ – early-retiring with a £550,000 bonus. Company assets gone from £4 billion in 1999 to £150 million in 2003. Losses last year in excess of £458 million.
The history of British steel production during the 20th century was epitomised by the indecision of government and trade unions as to a clear strategy for the industry. The inability to deliver armaments in the First World War made the argument for nationalisation and one company: British Steel. But the government was unwilling to grasp the implications of such a move – taking control of the steel industry effectively meant that manufacture using metal was being removed from the grip of capitalism. The result was nearly 60 years of dithering. Part-nationalisation by the Wilson government was a half-hearted measure. Thatcher, following on the failure of the 1980 national steel strike, closed great tranches of the industry, subsequently paving the way for the aberration of Corus.