Former boss of Tata Steel in call to Redcar workers

Oct 19 2009 By Sue Scott, Evening Gazette

A BBC programme due to be broadcast this evening in which a former boss of Tata Steel in India claims Redcar workers will have to raise their game if they are to avoid the axe, have been dismissed as irrelevant.

The interview with Balasubramanian Muthuraman, former managing director, now non-executive vice chairman of Tata Steel, is nevertheless likely to infuriate the 4,000 staff and contractors facing redundancy at Redcar’s Teesside Cast Products (TCP) plant.

Since the programme was recorded six months ago, the works - which faced immediate shut down when a consortium of buyers pulled the plug on nearly 80% of its orders - has cut costs dramatically and restored output capacity to levels not seen since October 2008.

Geoff Waterfield, chairman of the Multi Union Works Committee on Teesside, which represents staff at several local plants, including TCP, said: “Muthuraman made those comments six months and we have made a lot of changes and done a lot of things differently to get the position we are now.

“For us it was a simple case of if we did not do it we would not be able to export and we might shut.”