Any fellow steelworks out there from Redcar??? i feel for you 🙁 hope things get better for you all

From a Scunthorpe Steel worker (a worried one)

10 years at Redcar before moving on, still have some family there but gladly unaffected as yet.

Sad day indeed – just seen a former colleague holding back the tears on a TV interview. Tough to watch.

No doubt a new call centre or crisp factory will be heralded as a saviour.

As an ex steelworker, Patternshop,its another nail in the coffin for british manufactureing industry,sadly when Corus gave away the steel industry as a chineese takeaway,the end was nigh.

But as said above,highly skilled and trained steelworkers will be recruited to work in a new call centre,or other pointless womens work,not real mens work,that involved whole families, and the comradeship that was there,where father fallowed father, and then the sons went in as well.

Mothballing a steelworks doesnt work,furnaces take months to relight, and where are the trained and skilled workers going to come from,when a lot are signed off sick,or on stupid back to work training courses.

Rant over.

just working my last 5 weeks at the Corus Shotton site before redundancy. Not a good time.

I done a YTS / apprenticeship in the Teesside steelworks 20 years ago before moving on… sad day for people I know that work(ed) there. Its not just the end of the plant its the end of the area.

Project, it is possible to get the site going again, i don't see it happening though. The Llanwern mills are up and running again against all odds.

project – Member

But as said above,highly skilled and trained steelworkers will be recruited to work in a new call centre,or other pointless womens work,not real mens work,that involved whole families, and the comradeship that was there,where father fallowed father, and then the sons went in as well.

Sounds great 🙄

Thankfully, most parents have higher ambitions for their children these days than to see them simply following in their footsteps.

Ex Scunthorpe foundry worker hear,sad to see the demise of another traditional industry in the country.
Government says 60 million available to support workers I say give it all to the workers instead of setting up job clubs and shite like that!

Sad day for Teeside,Scunthorpe will probably be next 🙁

Sad day indeed.
druidh not everyone can or indeed wants to be a brain surgeon, high court judge or astronaut, believe it or not the heavy industries that have been systematically shafted, provided good honest jobs for honest hard working people- nothing wrong in that

colnagokid – Member
Sad day indeed.
druidh not everyone can or indeed wants to be a brain surgeon, high court judge or astronaut, believe it or not the heavy industries that have been systematically shafted, provided good honest jobs for honest hard working people- nothing wrong in that

I'm not denying that – but inheriting jobs is how you institutionalise the class system.

There is good money to be made working in the mills, enough to actually have a decent life. Unlike call centre drones.

druidh – Member

project – Member

But as said above,highly skilled and trained steelworkers will be recruited to work in a new call centre,or other pointless womens work,not real mens work,that involved whole families, and the comradeship that was there,where father fallowed father, and then the sons went in as well.

Sounds great

Thankfully, most parents have higher ambitions for their children these days than to see them simply following in their footsteps.

Yep, Doctors kids usually work for the Nhs, and teachers kids usually end up as teachers,and bone idle lazy bastards usually have kids that do the same.

Thing is with heavy industry is theres so much selection of jobs,where as office wallers, just move desks and count pieces of paper.

Aside from class wars, the real point is being missed. As manufacturing industries drip and ebb away from the UK it will become harder and harder to ever regain the skills and knowledge required to ever make anything in the UK again.

As above anyone can be told how to type, or play with a computer, designing and makeing a large steel component, and understanding all the skills and trades that goes into its manufacture is what matters.

Thats what we are loosing along with the specialist machinery.

Never seen a site http://WWW.BALSTFURNACES-ARE-US.CON

project – Member
As above anyone can be told how to type, or play with a computer, designing and makeing a large steel component, and understanding all the skills and trades that goes into its manufacture is what matters.

Thats what we are loosing along with the specialist machinery.

Oh the ironing…

a sad day indeed as it seems unlikely it will ever re-open. I rather hoped that the credit crunch / recession had made it clear to our leaders how totally cack were all the City / business services / finance jobs that the 1992 – 2007 boom was based upon and that manufacturing as part of a more balenced (regionally as well as sectorally) economy was the best way ahead for UK but closure of places like this constitutes a massive de-skilling and hollowing out of the whole economy. Where is the support for R & D, science education, engineering and so on that we so clearly need? Its pretty sad that our biggest manufacturer and engineer is an arms maker that appears to depend upon government largesse and bribery.

terrible for tees-side and the north east on the whole. 1700 jobs going is a real disaster. Good Luck to all affected.

The latest development plan for the NE is renewables, particularly turbines. Presumably the steel for them will be imported to Sheppard's new yard.

I'm not denying that – but inheriting jobs is how you institutionalise the class system

Actually there is a grain in truth there. Studies have shown that as the recent history of the North East (and other old industrial regions) has been dominated by large organisations employing lots of people, the effects when these companies leave, go bust, are systematically dismantled (coughthatchercough) is devastating. The socio-economic institutions which enhanced the operations of these industries remain deeply ingrained and impede other forms of development – e.g. shifting from huge workforces employed by other people to trying to spur entreprenuership is incredibly difficult. Put simply, people are used to working for someone else.

To some extent, you can see this reflected by the types of employment that dominates the NE today – public sector, call centres etc. So far local, regional and national government has failed to address this problem in any systematic or concerted way.

grew up in redcar…got the **** outta there as soon as I could.
not nice whats happening though….shame it wasn't down south then the government maight have give a shit!

My father worked in heavy industry on Teesside, I grew up round there. I'm glad to say I am now a middle management marketeer living in London.

Boro boy here, family and friends worked in the industry over the years, I've worked in Teesside, Sheffield and Rotherham myself for a steel contractor. Dad is an HRD in the industry now and is having to spread some misery around.
Sad times.

Thing is with heavy industry is theres so much selection of jobs,where as office wallers, just move desks and count pieces of paper.

God, I really hate that attitude. Do you really believe that there's a much greater difference between, say, welding and running a lathe, than between accounting and industrial design?

I like counting pieces of paper, you get to control what the people who stick bits of metal together do 😉

Sad day for a large number of families in the NE. Hope someone comes in to buy it!

But the f***ing BBC has a headline about bloody Tiger Wood's pathetic apology which affects very few people apart from him and his family.

Philby -local news has been pretty good with this, but as you say, outside of the N.E. its a minor story 'specialy as its eastenders birthday

Sad day …

Oh … yes, let's bail out the banking system and make some more bonuses …

😡

I grew up in Scunny and somehow managed to avoid working on there, even though I ended up in industry. However almost everyone I know does or has at some point. Can't help fearing for their future.

Very sad news. I saw the dessimation of our local steel industry in the early 80's and witnessed just how devastating that was for the local community.

I'm not denying that – but inheriting jobs is how you institutionalise the class system.

Not quite sure that this is true. You could be a doctor but never lose your accent or upbringing, which for the most part you will pass on. Surely it's about the type of cultural capital that a person accrues through life that defines their class status not their wealth or vocation.

Sad day for a large number of families in the NE. Hope someone comes in to buy it!

But the f***ing BBC has a headline about bloody Tiger Wood's pathetic apology which affects very few people apart from him and his family.

Well said, and totally true. Can't see why some dull foreigner who happens to be quite good at the most tedious game in the world should dominate the BBC news to such a huge extent. Even Radio 4, which is normally the only source of intelligent news, got caught up with the whole boring Tiger Woods thing.

As for the thing about institutionalising the class system, why is it assumed that's such a bad thing? I grew up in an area dominated by shipbuilding where it was quite common for sons to follow fathers into similar work. It was a much happier community then than it is now, blighted by drugs and call centres. People knew their place and were quite happy, though equally, if you wanted out and to go to university then that was easy enough too. You just studied hard. People in the town lived happy, comfortable lives with fairly secure employment and good wages.

A lot of the problems today stem from people wanting too much.

Forgive my blinding ignorance, but what were the reasons for the shut down. Lack of demand, outsourced or imports being cheaper?

In a nutshell a consortium of 5 companies – including Corus at 22% – agreed to take steel slab at cost price for 10 years for a one off payment to Corus of circa £80m in 2004.

In the intervening years they went on to make several billion pounds in profit from that initial investment.

In 2008/9 due to the world financial crisis all commodity prices dropped -the consortium could buy slab elsewhere for cheaper than the cost price deal they had from Teesside – and so ripped the contract up – knowing that the legal system would take years to ever catch up with them and they were all foreign mostly privately owned companies that were pretty much untouchable anyway.

In the good days they made money hand over fist – when things got tough they ran off with the loot. Daylight robbery.

Ah
So in the governments eyes it's ok to do that then 😐
Billions to RBS for their sterling work, millions to the steel industry.
OK………….?

How do I go about not paying Tax or having a bank account please?

And what mattress for keeping my money under.

come on, you should all be happy. the Teeside has been shut down in a carbon trading transaction.

They've had 13 years. Why are things worse than when they started?

well, 1700 more people on the dole, along with the other benefits they can claim, a few will loose their homes now they can't meet the mortgage payments, some will move away as the only hope, for a few it may work out for others?, some will retire before their time, at least Corus still has a final salary scheme and you can bring payments forward, and a few will probably commit suicide as the only way out.

It is a $hit situation but nothing will be done about it.

Imagine a map of the UK, as far as the politicians and media are concerned, the land beyond the M25 is marked with the words "there be dragons."

The worst part is that once the jobs are gone they never return, so when the upturn comes the jobs will have moved on.

The difference between us and our foreign neighbours ( mainly France and Germany) is that they would not allow their main Industries to become foreign owned, and then ultimately shutdown! Surely it is irresponsible to allow this. If they have to be state funded then so be it. I'd rather my taxes were spent on this than Government non jobs. 65 to 70% of all jobs created during this recession are Government sponsored non jobs due to end in 6 months time ( oh just after the election!)

I believe in Germany the law means that if a company makes employees redundant, then they have to carry on paying them a full wage until they get more work. If that kind of system was in place here, it would mean the likes of Corus aren't quite so keen to pull the plug so quickly.
Ignoring the socio-economic class bollards being discussed here, its a sad day, you only have to look whats happened in South Wales over recent years to see how it could affect the area.