Tata Steel to cut 3,000 jobs in Wales, HR News, ETHRWorld

London: Indian-owned Tata Steel is to cut about 3,000 jobs at a plant in Wales, a source said Thursday, as the industry struggles to finance greener production of the metal.

The company will on Friday confirm the closure of two blast furnaces at the Port Talbot steelworks, resulting in the loss of over one-third of staff, the source with knowledge of the plan told AFP.

It follows talks Thursday with unions, who described the development as “a crushing blow”.

Tata in a statement said it had “been engaging regularly and constructively with… trades union colleagues and their advisors for some time about the best way forward to create a sustainable green steel future for Tata Steel in the UK.

“When we have any formal announcement to make about our proposals for the future, we will always share these with our employees first,” it added.

Towards the end of last year, the UK government provided £500 million ($634 million) to fund the production of “greener” steel at the country’s biggest steelworks, while saying that 3,000 jobs were still at risk.

The money for an electric furnace safeguarded 5,000 of the more than 8,000 jobs.

“Large-scale job losses would be a crushing blow to Port Talbot and UK manufacturing in general,” Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, a senior official at the GMB union, said Thursday.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. Unions…