1. Evening Gazette, Saturday, May 9, 2009 NEWS 32 NEWS Evening Gazette, Saturday, May 9, 2009ONLINE: www.gazettelive.co.uk MOBILE: m.gazettelive.co.uk ONLINE: www.gazettelive.co.uk MOBILE: m.gazettelive.co.uk
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WHAT’S ON
TODAY:
■ JOBS
BLOW: Go
online to
tells us how
the Corus job
cuts will
affect you
GEORGE DUNNING, right, former steel
worker and leader of Redcar and
Cleveland Council, is involved in setting
up a “steel task force”, led by One
North East, to help workers. He said:
“There are certain things we [the
council] can do in relation to welfare rights, rent
rebates, help with how to claim council tax relief
and other benefits. The steel task force has been
ready to go and we’ll have to go straight away
now.”
GREG CLARK, Shadow Minister for Teesside,
said: “I have asked to meet the management of
Corus to discuss what can be done to stave off any
closure of the plant. I have also asked to meet
Business Secretary Lord Mandelson to discuss the
situation on Teesside with this latest blow
following so soon after the loss of the SeaDragon
rig contract.”
ASHOK KUMAR, right, Middlesbrough
South and East Cleveland MP, said:
“Since Friday morning we have been
talking to One North East to check out
what the position is with regard to the
Government. We feel there’s still an
industry to be saved.”
DARI TAYLOR, right, MP for Stockton
South, said: “I’m now attempting to
work with everyone involved to save
Corus. The one thing we do and we do it
best is we work together - we’ve done it
in the past. The last thing any of us
wants is to see Corus hit the wall.”
MARK HANNON, Redcar and Cleveland Council's
Cabinet member for economic development, said:
"We need the Government to step up to the mark
and start supporting our manufacturing industries.
We're facing serious social and economic effects.”
VERA BAIRD, MP for Redcar, said: “I have been in
talks to set up a response group to move in at
once to support the workers should the 90 days
expire without getting new orders or the old
contract back. But we have those 90 days and we
are pulling out all the stops to keep Redcar
steelworks going. This is a fighting community and
we have brought the plant back from the brink
before.”
KEITH HUNTER, right, managing
director TTE Technical Training Group,
Teesside, responsible for the 60
apprentices at Corus’ TCP plant, took
a call from Sabic president Paul
Booth yesterday asking what he
could do to help. He said: “The first thing is
to make sure that we have the financial
support in place to complete their
apprenticeships - that would be a combination
of support from Corus and Government. Then
there’s the wider issue of finding them
placements. This would be a golden
opportunity for those companies who
currently do not sponsor an apprentice to
pick up the baton and enable them to
complete their training.”
SIR STUART BELL, right,
Middlesbrough MP, said: “I
warned in my budget speech that there
was a threat to our steel plant in
Teesside. The Teesside MPs will work
closely with Business Secretary Lord
Mandleson to do all that we can to ensure that the
plant does not permanently close.”
By SUE SCOTT Business Editor
sue.scott@eveninggazette.co.uk
WITH thousands of Teesside workers
facing the dole as Corus’s life-saving
deal melted into thin air, the
Government pledged to “do what it
could” to support the Redcar Teesside
Cast Products CP plant.
Today, we call on Prime Minister Gordon
Brown and Business Secretary Lord
Mandelson to deliver more than words.
The Gazette has revived the Save Our Steel
campaign, which helped to rescue Corus in
2003.
And as politicians quickly got behind us, it
was clear this time the fight transcended
party lines and even party policy.
Both North-east Conservative and Labour
MEPs, Martin Callanan
and Stephen Hughes,
supported the Gazette’s
call for the Government to
bolster Corus with a
time-limited wage subsidy,
which would give it
breathing space to build
the order book and secure
a buyer.
So far, the Treasury has
refused to match the
subsidies available from
other European
governments to keep
strategically important
industries alive through
recession.
But steelworkers on Teesside have already
had to watch as colleagues in Corus’s Dutch
plants received millions of euros in wage
support packages - 70% of them
underwritten by their government.
There has been emphatic support, too, for
our call for extra help for the 60 young
apprentices who stand to lose everything if
Corus closes.
Only this week, Sembcorp’s recruitment
chief at Wilton, George Ritchie, accused the
Government of betraying thousands of
young people facing redundancy.
He said employers could not be expected
to mop up the thousands of apprentices
who had lost their jobs - and any prospect of
finishing their qualifications - without
financial support. But if they didn’t, Britain
risked creating another lost generation.
MEP Stephen Hughes said he would write
immediately to the Department of Work and
Pensions demanding an application be
made to Europe’s Globalisation Adjustment
Fund - a pot of cash that has been woefully
under-spent by the British government.
“We desperately need to retain
apprenticeships,” said Mr Hughes.
“The last thing we want is for people to be
pushed out and the spectre of long-term
unemployment - as we had in the Eighties -
return to haunt us.
“There is nothing stopping the government
applying to the GAF for wage subsidies to
support apprenticeships.”
Conservative colleague Martin Callanan
went further by calling for time-limited wage
subsidies for the wider Corus workforce.
“I would not be in favour of tax payers’
money being used long term - history has
showed us that does not work. But on a
temporary basis I would support it.
“The government is already supporting
LDV and Jaguar Land Rover and other
industrial companies in the Midlands - so
why not Corus?”
He too called on the Treasury to access
European funding.
A spokesman for the Business Secretary
refused to say whether Lord Mandelson’s
statement that “the government stands
ready to do whatever it can to support the
company” extended as far as wage subsidies,
but Stockton North MP Frank Cook said it
would be a “novel event” if the government
intervened at any level.
“It didn’t with SeaDragon and it may well
not do so with Corus,” he said.
Finally, the Save Our Steel campaign is
calling on the government to guarantee that
all publicly-funded building contracts will
use British steel.
That has the support of Geoff Waterfield,
chairman of the Teesside works multi-union
committee which represents TCP staff along
with colleagues in other Corus Long
Products divisions at Redcar.
“There are a number of things the
government could do,” he said.
“The government has got to recognise that
the manufacturing base is in massive free
fall,” said Mr Waterfield.
“The government has a lot of influence -
whether that’s politically in Europe or in the
manufacturing arena.
“It’s got to be cheaper to keep 2,000 people
in work and paying taxes than to have
families on welfare.”
Speaking after a press conference
yesterday, announcing the collapse of the
consortium deal that should have
guaranteed the plant’s survival for at least
another five and a half years, Corus MD Jon
Bolton said TCP would attempt to find as
much work as it could from other sources.
“As of last night we stopped making steel
for the Consortium,” he said yesterday.
“We will strive to put an order book
together that will keep the plant going for as
long as possible.”
He said the door was still open for
consortium members Marcegaglia and
Dongkuk to honour their offer to buy the
plant - made as little as two months ago.
Asked why the consortium had reneged on
the 10-year deal, Mr Bolton said: “You’ll have
to ask them.”
Unless they do something
we’ll all be down the road... My
girlfriend
works for
PD Ports,
so there
may be a
knock-on
effect there
too.
If I don’t
get another
job, I don’t
know how
I’m going
to pay the
mortgage -
cleaner
Stephen
Sweeney,
below,
outside the
gates of
Teesside’s
Corus plant,
left, after
yesterday’s
devastating
news,
above
Pictures below
by IAN
McINTYRE
By DAVE ROBSON
dave.robson@eveninggazette.co.uk
CLEANER Irene Russell was one of the
first workers out of the main gates after
the news had broken.
Irene, 46, of Redcar, left her previous
job after 10 years because Corus offered
her the chance of working at one site.
Describing the mood in the plant
yesterday as “very sombre,” she said:
“It looks like I’ll be going back to going
from job to job again. But really, I’m one
of the lucky ones - I don’t have a
mortgage or anything like that. It’s those
that have young kids I feel sorry for.
“My brother’s been here since he was
18 and he’s 52 now - he lives and
breathes the place.”
Contractors, too, were gloomy.
Scaffolding contractor Chris Donnelly,
43, from Middlesbrough, said: “There’s
probably 1,500 contractors, even more,
so it’s devastating for us too. I thought
my days of travelling around with a
holdall were gone - obviously not.”
Site cleaning contractor Stephen
McLean, 49, said: “It looks like I’ll be
SOMBRE: Cleaner Irene Russell fears she
may now have to go from job to job again
What we want,
Mr Brown:
■ Time-limited wage
subsidy for all Teesside
Cast Products workers
■ Cash to protect apprentice
training
■ Pledge to use British steel in all
Government contracts
SUPPORT:
MEP Stephen
Hughes
trying to find another job, to put it
bluntly, but jobs are hard to come by.”
And cleaner Stephen Sweeney, 24, of
Dormanstown, fears his household will
be doubly hit. He said: “My girlfriend
works for PD Ports, so there may be a
knock-on effect there too. If I don’t get
another job, I don’t know how I’m going
to pay the mortgage. Things look bad
but you’ve got to try and be optimistic.”
FEARS:
Contractor
Chris
Donnelly,
above, is
worried
about the
future
What’s been
said and
done so far
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