30 March 2015
Scuthorpe steel workers at the TUC’s 2014 march for pay. Photo Workers.
Steel trade unions with members employed by Tata Steel (the Indian steel-producing minnow which swallowed the whale that once was British Steel) in Port Talbot, Scunthorpe, Rotherham and other sites are balloting for strike action over imposed changes to the pension scheme.
The planned closure of the final salary pension scheme would affect 17,000 workers. But Tata has refused to enter into meaningful negotiations with Community, the steel workers’ union.
It is over 30 years since the steel industry faced national industrial action when plant closures and massive redundancies reduced it from one employing over 200,000 workers to less than a tenth of that size today.