REAL LIVES Save our steel
no really big companies round here that pay good wages and offer a reasonable career path. To get any job with security people have to move away.”
Forty Tata apprentices are due to arrive at the plant in September, says Ian, but there is no guarantee that next year’s intake, currently in college, would be found work in the plant.
Andrew Groom, a 30-year-old systems engineer who completed his apprenticeship at the works, says that it’s not people like him who will suffer, it’s the people without formal qualifications who work on the line; whose jobs are unique to steelmaking.
“But it’s not just the future of the steelworks we are talking about,” says Andrew,” it’s the impact on contractors and on towns like Bridgend, Neath and Swansea.”
When I went to Port Talbot at the end of June Unite members, like everyone else in Britain, were preoccupied with the referendum result – and its potential impact on the plant. Some 57 per cent of people in the Port Talbot area had voted for Brexit.
While the result made Port Talbot steel cheaper abroad because the pound had plummeted to historic lows, it also created deep anxiety about the future because the UK sends 40 per cent of its steel exports to the EU.
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Said Pasty, “Before the referendum, the uncertainty about the plant was obviously the focus of attention…The referendum, the political shenanigans and the progress of the Welsh football team in the European championships gave people something else to talk about.
Sanctuary “Up till then people would go home and as soon as they walked in the door they would be asked about the future of the works. If they went to the pub it would be the same. Work was almost a sanctuary because we are all in the same boat.
“Morale was at rock bottom at one stage, but it’s been dragging on. It’s as if people think it hasn’t happened so it isn’t going to happen.
“But there’s still a lot of anger with the company for putting the company up for sale. And now they’re attacking our pensions. But who to direct the anger at, that’s the problem.”
Mark believes that the steelworkers who voted for Brexit might be having second thoughts. “For a lot of people in Port Talbot it was just a protest vote. But then they woke up the day after the referendum and thought, my god what have we done? If we re-run the referendum now, I think the result would be different.”
The EU has funded a series of projects in Port Talbot including the town’s new
railway station which was built with Port Talbot steel. Wales generally is a net beneficiary of EU funding, receiving considerably more than it pays in.
A recent announcement from Tata that it was suspending the sale of the plant, has done nothing to dispel uncertainty. “It moves us no further forward,” said Mark. “In fact it makes our members more anxious while still not answering the long term future of the steel industry in the UK.”
Pasty, a leading member of Unite’s LGBT community in Wales, says the works has meant a great deal more to steelworkers than wages. “I’ve loved every minute of it. There is great camaraderie at the plant. It’s a family. People rally round you when you need it. I’m bisexual and sometimes they take the mick, but no-one else is allowed to.”
Apart from the dramatic economic impact of the loss of the plant, Pasty, who once worked at the long-gone Ebbw Vale steel works, begged to differ with those who see Port Talbot’s great wheezing monster as a blot on the landscape.
“I think the steelworks is beautiful. At two or three in the morning in the summer it can be romantic. I can’t imagine Port Talbot without it. People need hope; something to aspire to. Seeing the steelworks gives you comfort.”
Unite’s ‘baked goodies’ – Spud and Pasty
20 uniteWORKS Summer 2016
Mark Thomas
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