Part six. Scunthorpe: Output up, workforce down

The British Steel Corporation's Anchor Steelworks is one of the most modern in the world.

Yet by the time it goes into full production later this year, it will employ at least 3,500 men fewer than it does today and 5,000 fewer than when the project was first conceived.

Both the BSC and the works convenor, Mr Peter Hansell, claim the labour run down has and will be achieved by natural wastage.

Nevertheless it is not merely the fate of 3,500 individuals that is at stake at Scunthorpe.

More important in a smallish town hemmed in by the dense wasteland of Lincolnshire's agricultural worlds, the reduction means job opportunities destroyed for all time.

Since 1967, the steelworks' labour force has been cut back from 21,000 to 18,800, leaving another 3,500 jobs to go as the new plant is brought into production.

There is already 3.3-percent unemployment in the town and 3.6-per-cent in the region, which includes Doncaster, Goole, Grimsby, Gainsborough and Lincoln.

Twenty-five per cent is among young people between the ages of 16 and 24. than the machinery it replaces.

The new LD Converters involve a generous perpetual shower of red dust and the speed of some mills has now reached such levels in the quest for profit that fatal accidents can only be prevented by flashing lights and wailing sirens which disorientate and deafen.

COMPUTERS The mile-long rolling mills on the 1,000-acre : Anchor site designed for fully comforeign ores imported through the new fully-mechanized terminal at Immingham.

A new basic oxygen BOS plant with three 300-ton converters will produce up to 4.4 million tons of steel a year increasing Scunthorpe's steelmaking capacity by 1.8 million tons.

The rationalization at Scunthorpe in a £200m development was the first maber BSC ject undertaken by the after the re-nationalization of the industry by the Labour government.

Ev been ore to tl Scun 'man comI pract TI Redt ingh: rollir Al labor close

on of three s at dingwill d by 10ps.

will preruildJ-ton ough terThe Scunthorpe site has been favoured by steelmakers since the beginning of the century because of the abundance of cheap local iron ore.

Conesly, Warren and Yarborough open-cast mines and the Santon underground mine still provide two thirds of the ore used each year at Scunthorpe.

Of the 12 million tons used, 8 million are mined locally and 4 million are imported, putting Scunthorpe's s te el-making costs among the lowest in Britain.

Everything possible has been done, from the moment ore leaves the pit or tanker influx of largely unskilled men onto the local dole queues where even the prospect of work in Lincolnshire's other major industry-farming— will be absent.

Ten open-hearth furnaces will also shut once the BOS plant swings into action and further redundancies are likely.

Almost all expert opinion agrees that the shake-out of men as a result of rationalization throughout the industry will almost certainly be greater than the BSC has been able to forecast.

And even when, throughout Britain, the process is comhave expanded from up to 300 tons of steel every six to eight hours using the open-hearth method to 300 tons every 40 minutes using only two BOS converters and a handful of As a spokesman for the now Tory-controlled BSC put it: 'All the low-paid labouring jobs will disappear. The town will be better off.' Until recently labour has been in short supply in Scunthorpe and local employment officers say this is the reason why next to no industry other than the steelworks has gone to the town.

The steelworks has ensured that labour is not particularly cheap and there is, therefore, little good reason why industry should settle there.

One or two small textile firms and a chemical plant employing mainly women have moved in, but that is all.

The steelworks experiences labour turnover of between 2,000 and 3,000 men a year. The vast majority of this movement derives from necessarıly seasonal employment on the land.

This winter option will not now be available and the next 12 months must see a doubling or even trebling of local un1973 BSC's Anchor Steelworks at Scunthorpe. Surrounded by agricultural land of Linconshire, the steelworks is the • area's only heavy industry. employs as a whole are not his concern.

Nevertheless he explains that Scunthorpe is a steel town and that as a result of the loss in job opportunities 'the young people particularly will have problems'.

Mr Hazell pursues an argument common to men as apparently different as Tory Industry Minister Peter Walker and Scottish TUC deputy general secretary Mr James Milne.

He told me the trade unions