The steel giant preparing to buy Corus’ mothballed factory in the north-east of England expects to create up to 1,000 jobs when production restarts, unions said this week.
SSI, Thailand’s biggest steel firm, is negotiating with Tata Steel to buy the Teesside Cast Products plant at Redcar. SSI UK managing director David Read met union representatives last week to explain the firm’s position.
GMB national secretary Keith Hazelwood told Tribune: “He said 800 jobs and then he said as many as 1,000. He gave a verbal presentation – it was straight from the heart.”
Tata, then known as Corus, closed the plant in April after a contractor abruptly pulled out of a long-term supply deal last year. Around 800 workers remain on site, down from over 2,000 last year after redeployments and redundancies.
Mr Hazelwood said: “There’s every chance that these people could be brought back in a short term basis to train people up.”
A spokesperson for the Community union, which also attended the meeting, confirmed up to 1,000 jobs had been offered. “We found it pretty positive. If they want to start steelmaking again, they’re
going to need a similar number of people to do it.”
Community has run a “Save our Steel” campaign since last year, warning that loss of the factory could lead to a total of 10,000 jobs being lost on Teesside.
An SSI spokesperson declined to comment on the figures but said the amount of jobs created at Teeside would be “in the hundreds”.
