Union pushes plan for steel
The UK steel industry is at a crossroads. Steel production is carbon intensive. A transition is needed if the UK is to meet its carbon goals. And the UK’s four blast furnaces, which produce 80 per cent of our steel and provide thousands of jobs, need replacing over the next decade or so. Their owners have proposed a more rapid closure with the loss of up to 5,000 direct jobs and many more beyond that. Steel production has been in a long decline in the UK. At its peak in the early 1970s, the industry employed around 320,000 people. It is now somewhere around 5-10% of that. Just before Margaret...