Steel makers Corus have announced 1,150 job cuts and that a further 2,200 jobs are at risk.
The company - which runs what used to be British Steel - wants to stop steel production at Stocksbridge in South Yorkshire and cut production severely at Tipton in the West Midlands. Other cuts will be made at Llanwern is South Wales and Teeside.
The plant at Redcar on Teeside has been hived off from the rest of the company and forced to go it alone. A move which workers see as preparing the ground for eventual closure.
Corus employs more than 25,000 workers in the UK. It made huge profits in the 1990s. They went in shareholder dividends, rather than investment and modernisation. This year, while the steel industry was raking in profits world-wide, Corus lost £400 million, but they still made enough to pay their new chief executive over £800,000 a year. If you want a clear example of how capitalist management doesn't work, then Corus is it!
At the moment many workers at Stocksbridge are working overtime to fulfill orders, but soon they could be on the dole. Workers at those plants threatened with closure need to remember that only determined and decisive action has a chance of winning - action like that taken in Argentina, workers occupying the plants and demand that the company be taken into public ownership under workers' control and management.
