Tata announce threat to hundreds of steel jobs could go at Newport plant

Hundreds of jobs could go at a steelmaking factory in Newport after its owner announced it was shutting part of its operations.

The steel giant Tata is closing its Orb Electrical Steels base in the Pill area of the city.

Up to 380 jobs could go from the plant, which makes electrical steel used in power transmission.

The company has been for sale since May 2018 as Tata had decided to concentrate on its core steel production business.

Tata Steel’s European operations head Henrik Adam said: “I recognise how difficult this news will be for all those affected and we will work very hard to support them.”

BBC Wales has been told the 380 workers can be redeployed at its Welsh plants.

Unions said Tata – which employs nearly 6,000 workers in Wales – was breaking its commitments over job guarantees.

Orb Electrical Steels is part of Tata’s Cogent division, part of which is being sold to the Japanese steel company JFE Shoji Trade Corporation.

The Orb site makes electrical steel used in generators, transformers, motors and magnetic products, including for the car industry.

But the sector has been suffering from over-capacity over the last 10 years, and struggling to compete in particular with big volume producers in China.

“This business is the smallest volume electrical steel manufacturer in the world – and we’ve only been able to make a profit in two of the last 10 years and no profit in the last four years,” Tor Farquhar, Tata Steel Europe’s HR director, told BBC Wales.

Meanwhile, converting the Orb plant would have cost Tata more than £50m.

Mr Adam added: “Continuing to fund substantial losses at Orb Electrical Steels is not sustainable at a time when the European steel industry is facing considerable challenges.”

Roy Rickhuss of the Community steelworkers’ union called it “shocking” news which “makes a mockery of the understanding we reached with Tata around the jobs guarantee”.

“There has been no consultation about this proposal either at UK or European level and company management should hang their heads in shame in the way this has come about,” he said.

“This is of course extremely devastating news for workers at the Orb, but all Tata Steel workers should be concerned by the way Tata is breaking its commitments.”

He called for government intervention.

One of the plant’s union officials Paul Horton, who has nearly 37 years experience, said it would mean a loss of well-paid jobs in the area, with workers earning up to £40,000, with overtime on top.

“We weren’t expecting anything this severe, this quickly,” he said. “We understand the business has been struggling but there has been no inkling of this happening over the last few weeks.”

Unite’s Tata official Tony Brady said Orb’s closure would be a “body blow” for the economy of Wales.

“Unite will be fighting for every job and holding Tata Steel’s feet to the fire over assurances that workers affected by today’s announcement will be redeployed.”

He said the union would not sit back and allow “decent well-paid jobs and irreplaceable skills to go to the wall”.

Mr Adam said workers would be offered alternative employment at other Tata sites where possible and consultations with staff and unions would start shortly.

Tata is also closing its Wolverhampton Engineering Steels service centre, with up to 26 jobs at risk.

There has been steelmaking on the Newport site since 1898, when the old Lysaght company moved from Wolverhampton.

The famous city landmark, the transporter bridge, was built to carry workers across to the works.

It eventually became part of British Steel and then European Electrical Steels in 1991.

Heathrow strike action suspended on Monday as talks resume

A strike planned by Heathrow Airport workers on Monday has been called off, as talks continue to stop a further walkout on Tuesday.

Some 2,500 workers had planned to strike on both days in a row over pay.

Britain’s busiest airport cancelled 177 flights – roughly one in seven departures – after the Unite union rejected a pay offer.

But British Airways said it will now reinstate flights from Heathrow on Monday.

Air Canada said it is planning to operate its full flight schedule on Monday.

Virgin Atlantic has not cancelled flights but will continue with its plan to move them from Heathrow to Gatwick.

A spokeswoman for Virgin Atlantic said: “These services will not revert back to the original London Heathrow schedule and will remain in place.”

A Heathrow spokesman advised passengers to check with their airlines to see if there were any changes to cancelled fights.

He said: “We regret that passengers have been inconvenienced by this and urge them to contact their airline for up to date information on the status of their service.”

Flybe, Swiss, Lufthansa, Etihad, Qatar Airways, Aer Lingus, and TAP Air Portugal were among those to have confirmed cancellations, but it is not yet known if they will now reinstate flights.

Prior to the suspension of Monday’s strike action, airlines had begun to contact affected passengers, after some complained they had been left in the dark about whether their flights were affected.

Heathrow warned that security queues at the airport would be longer than normal, with passengers advised to arrive at least three hours before long-haul departures and two hours before short-haul.

Airlines also said they would impose restrictions on hand luggage to speed up boarding.

Paul Icklow from London, who is meant to fly to Spain with his family on Tuesday, told the BBC earlier that British Airways had been unable to give any information on Sunday morning, leaving him “frustrated”.

Meanwhile, Sarah McFadyen from Eastbourne said her flight to Abu Dhabi had initially been cancelled, then Etihad told her it “might still go”.

“So I have to turn up at Heathrow four hours before my flight to find out if it’s going… I am confused, frustrated.”

Heathrow says passengers will be able to rebook their flights for a different day, although choices may be limited given that August is peak holiday season.

Over 70,000 shop workers lose jobs as online sales & automation take hold

About 72,000 people lost their jobs in the retail industry in the past year as it has been hit by online shopping and automation.

The British Retail Consortium said the number of employees dropped 2.3 per cent in the second quarter of the year compared with the same period in 2018. It marked the 14th consecutive quarter of year-on-year decline.

Retail is on the front line of social and technological changes, with consumers increasingly spending their money on experiences rather than products, and purchasing more online. Roughly 18 per cent of all British retail sales are over the internet today.

Online sales have reduced demand for shop staff and stores are cutting costs by investing in automation, with self-service checkouts now common. Wage costs and business rates have also hammered the sector, with high street names such as HMV and Debenhams going under.

“We have seen retail employment falling across the country,” Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said. “Such declines are likely to endure, hastened by government policies that continue to add costs to an industry already under immense pressures.”

The consortium has been a fierce critic of business rates, which are charged on premises and disproportionately hit the industry. It said retailers accounted for 6 per cent of GDP but paid 26 per cent of business rates. The rates raise more than £30 billion annually, about the same as council tax.

A higher national living wage has also added to retailers’ costs and has pushed them to invest in automation to bring down pay bills.

The consortium found that job losses were greatest among full-time staff. They suffered a 3 per cent decline year-on-year compared with 2 per cent for part-time employees, as retailers appeared to prize flexibility.

Total hours worked fell by 2.5 per cent, with full-time hours being reduced more than part-time hours. Space taken by stores rose 1.7 per cent, which was down from 2.3 per cent in the first quarter, but the consortium said shops were serving a different role, “centred more on customer experience and offering social activities, for which fewer staff are needed”.

Households are also spending less in the shops. In a report published this month, the CBI, the business lobby group, found that retail sales volumes fell at their fastest pace in a decade in the year to June.

Ms Dickinson urged Boris Johnson to make retail a priority. “With a new prime minister and cabinet in place, there is a clear opportunity to rethink the high street strategy,” she said. “Business rates pose an unsustainable burden on shops and jobs.”

Nissan plans to cut 10,000 jobs as for Sunderland workers fear for jobs

Eight thousand Nissan workers in the UK are anxiously awaiting news as to where big cuts by the Japanese car manufacturer will fall.

Before the company’s half-year earnings figures, which are expected to be published tomorrow, reports out of Tokyo indicate that Nissan could call for 10,000 redundancies worldwide, double the 4,800 cuts the manufacturer had previously indicated. The news is expected to come overnight.

Nissan — Japan’s second largest automotive group, behind Toyota — is one of the UK’s largest automotive employers alongside Jaguar Land Rover and BMW, which builds Minis and Rolls-Royces in the country, and Ford, which assembles car and van engines.

The UK is Nissan’s main European base, employing 7,000 people at its sprawling manufacturing facilities in Sunderland, where it assembles nearly 500,000 vehicles a year, most notably the best-selling Qashqai model. There are another 1,000 employees working for its sales and marketing operations headquartered in Maple Cross, Hertfordshire, as well as at its engineering and research technical centre at Cranfield, Bedfordshire, and its design studio, the birthplace of the Qashqai, in Paddington, London.

A spokesman for Nissan declined to comment on the reports, saying: “We have made no announcement.”

The future of Nissan in Sunderland has been a political hot potato ever since Theresa May cut a secret deal with Nissan’s boss at the time, Carlos Ghosn, giving assurances of support for the plant during the uncertainties of Brexit. That, however, did not prevent Nissan from pulling plans to bring its X-Trail 4×4 model to the Sunderland assembly lines.

The reports out of Tokyo indicated that the focus of the job cuts may be in the Americas. Its South American plants are seen to be of low profitability while the carmaker has also been reporting weak sales in the United States.

The job cuts come against a backdrop of crisis at the auto giant. It lost its charismatic leader and saviour, Mr Ghosn, amid allegations of financial wrongdoing at the turn of the year. That destabilised its cross-shareholding alliance with Renault, the French carmaker. It has long been argued, most notably by Emmanuel Macron when he was the French economics minister, that more Nissan models should be manufactured at Renault’s under-utilised plants in France.

Nissan’s financial performance has not been good. Global sales fell last year by 4.4 per cent to 5.5 million. That included a 9 per cent fall in the US and a near-15 per cent fall in Europe, where there has been a backlash against diesel vehicles, directly impacting the Nissan Qashqai. In the first three months of the year, Nissan’s earnings fell to a nine-year low with a warning of worse to come.

Unite calls off Heathrow strikes set for busiest two days of the year

Strikes by 4,000 Heathrow airport workers on Friday and Saturday have been called off so they can vote on a new pay offer.

The strikes would have hit flights on one of the busiest weekends of the summer.

The Unite union said it would not give details of the offer until members had considered it.

Two more 48-hour strikes from 5 August and 23 August are currently still on the cards.

Earlier in July, Heathrow staff rejected an 18-month pay rise offer averaging 2.7%.

At the time, the union said the workers were angry over pay rates, including different pay rates for the same job.

There was also disquiet over the pay package of airport boss John Holland-Kaye, who got £4.2m in 2018, up from £2.1m in 2017, mainly thanks to a long-term bonus scheme.

Separately, on Tuesday British Airways lost a legal bid to stop its pilots from going on strike over pay in the summer holiday season, but said it planned to appeal against the decision.

The pilots’ union has yet to set any dates for industrial action.