News that UK unemployment was at its lowest level since 2008 was trumpeted over the airwaves last week. Yet in the north-east of England joblessness is still rising and far outstrips the national average. And for Teesside, rocked as it has been by the closure of its last remaining steelworks, the outlook is particularly bleak, with dole queues lengthening and the full fallout of the Redcar closure still to be felt.
On Thursday, the situation worsened with the shock announcement that 220 employees and 140 contractors at the UK’s only potash mine, down the coast at Boulby, are set to lose their jobs.
Sue Jeffrey, leader of Redcar and Cleveland borough council, said the area’s job market was going into meltdown. “I used that word,” she added, “because we are dependent on a small number of large industries and when we lose the jobs in those industries there is nothing to replace them.”
Over the past five years, council regeneration schemes have helped create 2,500 jobs, but Jeffrey said: “Over the last number of weeks we’ve lost all those – they’ve been wiped out. So where are the new jobs going to come from?”
On Friday, the government announced a new Tees Valley Inward Investment Initiative, chaired by Lord Heseltine and tasked with boosting growth and creating jobs. It will have a specific brief to attract foreign investment and raise the region’s international profile. Heseltine’s appointment will be controversial, given his suggestion last month that now was “a good time” for steelworkers to be made redundant because of the number of new jobs in the economy.
Heseltine, who led a regeneration initiative on Merseyside in the 1980s, will visit the region on Monday with James Wharton, Northern Powerhouse minister and Tory MP for the Teesside constituency of Stockton South. Announcing the initiative, business secretary Sajid Javid said: “The closure of the SSI Steelworks plant was a huge blow to local people. On top of the up to £80m package of direct support, we are determined to do all we can to secure long-term growth for the area.”
Local politicians and the area’s chamber of commerce had called for immediate government assistance following last week’s job losses. Tom Blenkinsop, Labour MP for Middlesbrough South, speaking before the plan was announced, said the government had so far been like “rabbits caught in the headlights”.
Further job losses across the region, have included 700 contractors laid off in Billingham as construction of an energy plant was paused, and a further 100 steel redundancies at Caparo in Hartlepool. Adding to Teesside’s woes came news that 700 jobs were at risk in Stockton and Middlesbrough as HM Revenue and Customs cuts staffing levels.
Blenkinsop said: “Unless we have some sort of countercyclical investment – including potentially some public investment to bring in the private finance – and try to mitigate what has happened, it’s pretty grim reading.”
He added that the issue for the region right now is coping with so many redundant industrial workers. “I am certain that every single worker – be they steelworkers, process workers, contractors, miners, electricians or engineers – has more than enough in the way of skills. The issues are whether they can stay in the locality, and whether they can get a job that pays anything like the good wages they were on at Boulby or SSI.”
The entire Tees Valley, from heavily urban areas to small villages, has been hit by the job losses. Boulby sits on cliffs swooping down to the North Sea on the edge of the North York Moors. The potash mine is this area’s biggest employer and much of the workforce live locally. Blenkinsop says such job losses will be a huge blow to a fragile rural economy.
Cleveland Potash, owner of the Boulby mine, has given few details about which of its 1,100 employees are at risk, which workers say is causing unwelcome uncertainty so close to Christmas. Steven Hodgson, 26, an electrician who has worked at Boulby for eight years, says the mine’s survival is crucial. “It’s massive. There’s not much big industry left around here. It’s going to be on a downward spiral, isn’t it?”
Early last month, the government announced a £80m support package for sacked SSI steelworkers, though some of that will be used for redundancy pay. Millions has been allocated to retraining and supply chain support schemes, and Jeffrey said around 100 former steelworkers had found new positions at specially arranged job fairs. But one of these workers – 26-year-old Jamie, who starts his first training course on Monday – said the job fair was attended largely by recruitment agencies and companies offering commission-based work. “The chances of finding something well-paid on Teesside are slim now,” he said.
Blenkinsop and Jeffrey point to plans to build carbon capture and storage facilities as evidence that there can be an industrial solution to the current crisis. Jeffrey is confident Teesside can bounce back over the longer term with the right support. “We are a resilient place. These are really difficult times but we’re not going to let them beat us.”
