Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
By Dave Reid
On Saturday steelworkers from all over Britain joined hundreds of Orb workers and their families on an impressive march through Newport to demand that the Tata Orb steelworks in the city is saved.
Tata has announced the closure of the Orb works and the loss of 380 jobs which has been making steel in Newport for over 100 years. The company claims the plant needs £50 million of investment to make it viable. Orb makes specialist electrical steel which now more than ever will be needed for the production of electric vehicles.
The plant has provided jobs for generations of steel workers in Newport but also makes a much wider contribution to the community. As Steve Turner, Assistant General Secretary of Unite, pointed out workers there inherited their jobs and now we must pass them on to future generations of steelworkers in the city. It is crazy to destroy these jobs, these skills and this plant just as the economy should be transitioning to an electrically-powered one. He called on the Tory UK government to intervene to save the plant.
Paul Horton, Community steward in the Orb works, described how the Orb had played a huge role in shaping Newport and providing good jobs. Newport County’s amber shirts are a reflection that the club was formed by steelworkers who had migrated from Wolverhampton to work in the Orb; the iconic Newport Transporter Bridge was built to transport workers to work at the Orb works.
Delegations of steel workers from Scunthorpe, Llanwern, Port Talbot, Shotton, Runcorn and many other areas brought solidarity to the Orb workers which summed up the threat to the whole British steel industry. As Steve Turner pointed out the British economy is cannot function without a large manufacturing sector and a manufacturing sector cannot function without a strong steel industry.
Community, the steel union, has put forward a plan to upgrade the plant so that it can produce steel for electric vehicles and use steel from Port Talbot. But it would require £30 million funding from the UK and Welsh governments with just £10 million net funding from Tata.
The plan shows how an integrated steel industry plan can be developed by the trade union movement, but we cannot rely on the vagaries of a multinational global giant like Tata to control what happens. The Welsh government should be intervening to nationalise Orb workers and bring it back into public ownership, demanding that the weak Tory UK government steps in to save a vital industry for British society.
