The Government is giving Tata £500million of taxpayers’ money to help pay for the new electric arc furnace at the site.
The owner of steel giant Tata raked in £3 billion of profits last year, it has been revealed by Unite the Union, after the company announced that it was axing around 3,000 jobs in the UK due to ‘financial reasons’.
Indian-owned Tata Steel UK last week confirmed plans to axe up to 3,000 British jobs. Most will go at its Port Talbot plant in South Wales with the closure of its two blast furnaces this year.
Most of the jobs are expected to go by September, with the majority in Port Talbot where the steelworks will be transitioned to a greener electric arc furnace, which will require a smaller workforce but will be environmentally friendly to operate.
The Government is giving Tata £500million of taxpayers’ money to help pay for the new electric arc furnace at the site.
Tata says that it was losing nearly £1.5million a day in the UK, however Unite the Union has slammed the company’s ‘pleas of poverty’ as a ‘sham’.
The union says that its research has revealed that Tata Steel Limited, the direct parent company of Tata Steel UK Limited made £3 billion in EBITDA and £900 million in net profits in 2022/23. Tata Steel Limited has reserves of £1.6 billion and has paid out dividends of £1.4 billion to shareholders between 2019 and 2023.
“In the last five years Tata Steel Limited’s revenue has grown by 47 per cent and it has generated a combined profit of £9.7 billion during that period. Tata Sons – parent company of Tata Steel Ltd is the massive Indian holding company of Tata Steel. Its company returns describe 2023 as its “best ever”, Unite said in a statement.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Tata’s pleas of poverty have been exposed as a sham. They are making money hand over fist and will only profit from bringing in more Indian and Dutch steel to the UK if we cut capacity.
“It is unbelievable that the government is going along with this. Rather than demanding that the needed investment comes with jobs guarantees and growth for UK steel – they are giving Tata half a billion of taxpayers’ money to slash its workforce and flood the UK with foreign steel.
“Port Talbot is far from the basket case that Tata has painted it as, there is an underlying healthy business, which could be transformed by serious investment to increase capacity, with the UK becoming the green capital of steel.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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