STEEL When Steel firm Tata announced 1,000 new job cuts including 750 at the Port Talbot steel works in South Wales, this led to loud protests from local and national union leaders. Steel union Community’s General Secretary Roy Rickhuss called for ‘meaninful action’ from the government. Of course it is right that the jobs should be saved.
Of course it should be nationalised to do this. Nor should Tata be compensated with a singly penny. But all these demands will be just hot air if the union itself isn’t prepared to organise its members to take some ‘meaningful action’ of their own to block the closure process and rally other workers to their side. The lesson of the closures of the 1970s is that an occupation of the workplace and solidarity action from other workers are the only tactics that are proven to stand a chance of stopping the jobs slaughter.
