Tata Steel subcontractors question the Greenpeace and Urgenda report. According to that report, practically everyone at Tata Steel can find another job in the region. According to the entrepreneurs, it is a non-discussion: Tata Steel is not going to close at all, they think. If it does happen, they see the future much more bleak than the report. “Tata Steel is the powerhouse of the region.”
According to Jeffrey Schotvanger, you should see it this way: “Employees of the paper mill Crown Van Gelder, which has now filed for bankruptcy, will now walk to the neighbor: and that is Tata Steel, or they are suppliers of Tata Steel. We can help those people use manner of speaking.”
Schotvanger is the director of Service Groep Nederland, which carries out maintenance on the Tata Steel site with three subsidiaries.
“Am I worried that Tata might have to close? If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said: not at all. But Tata is increasingly being written about in the news. I think it would be a very wrong decision to to close Tata Steel. Tata is really a driver of many technical innovations, much more than other companies. And that is not included in the Urgenda and Greenpeace report.”
Too limited
That report of yesterday comes to the conclusion that if Tata Steel closes now, everyone can actually find a new job. The regional labor market can absorb that blow, according to the report.
But according to Schotvanger, the research is too limited: “If Tata Steel goes bankrupt, many subcontractors will re-enter the market, which will be a battlefield. They have to compete with each other to win customers, and then the margins will become very small. with all its consequences.”
Two other Tata Steel subcontractors, who do not want to be named, want to say this: “It is mood-setting. I do not believe that Tata Steel will close. So I am not worried about our jobs either.”
Bluntly
Leen Wisker, the chairman of the Entrepreneurs Association in the IJmond, questions the report: “I haven’t been able to read it yet, I’ve only read about it. But emotionally, the conclusions are short-sighted.”
And if IJmond could do without the steel factory, the region would still be better off with the company, Wisker thinks: “We at OV-IJmond believe that Tata Steel’s transition to a new green, clean and circular steel company , is essential to be able to realize the ambition to become one of the front runners in the world as a green energy zone. This is not only in the interest of the entire IJmond, but also in the interest of the Netherlands.”
Schotvanger is lucky that his Service Group is located throughout the Netherlands, which means that he can also have his Tata people work elsewhere.
“We have about 450 people throughout the Netherlands and, all in all, an average of about 100 people walk around the Tata Steel site every day. It would indeed have a huge impact for those people if Tata closes. We will be able to return to most of them relocating, but that takes time. Others are over sixty and have always worked at Tata Steel, so it will be difficult for them.”
Ines Kostić , Member of Parliament for the Party of the Animals (PvdD), did embrace the conclusions of the report yesterday. “The argument to keep Tata for employment turns out to be just another Tata Morgana, one of the castles in the air that Tata has been creating for years to justify its poison tap. We are done with that,” she writes in a response.
Kostić: “For years everyone has been told that protecting health against Tata Steel would be a disaster for employment. The national government and the province, as the competent authority, have blindly followed suit. We have always questioned that and advocated research and commitment to a transition fund to help Tata employees transition to a green job. The other parties didn’t even dare to think about that. Now it is in black and white that the employment argument does not hold water.”
The PvdD in the same press release: “The PvdD wants the government to intervene now: close the most toxic part of Tata immediately and help the employees in the transition to a green job. The party also has no confidence in the so-called “Green Steel Plan ” by Tata Steel, which would solve all the problems. According to the party, there is still no evidence that the plan is really feasible. Even if it were feasible, the plan would still leave people in the toxins of the most polluting substances until at least 2030 According to the PvdD, this is unacceptable. Moreover, with that plan, the company will not become climate neutral in time and will remain indefinitely dependent on harmful extraction and shipping of iron ore, instead of working towards a truly circular company.”