BRITAIN’S steel industry will face “meltdown” without urgent intervention, unions said ahead of demonstrations on the streets of Brussels and Scunthorpe today.

General union Unite, which alongside GMB and Community represents workers at the three steelworks threatened with closure and hundreds of job losses this week, said Eurocrats should consider pushing China into the cold on trade matters.

China is accused of selling steel at knock-down prices — “dumping” — to protect its publicly owned steel industry amid a global slump.

French and Belgian workers will join a British delegation in a protest outside an emergency meeting of the EU Council of Ministers in Brussels.

The meeting was belatedly confirmed earlier this month by Tory Business Secretary Sajid Javid after unions piled on the pressure.

But yesterday union reps voiced concern that ministers were still “hiding behind the EU as an excuse to do nothing.”

Unite national officer Harish Patel said: “The Business Secretary needs to secure urgent action from tomorrow’s meeting to tackle the dumping of cheap Chinese steel and high energy costs.

“Nothing should be off the table, including a refusal to grant China market economy status while it fails to abide by EU rules on fair trade.

“Anything less and the continued failure by ministers to urgently intervene to support UK steel will push the crisis-hit industry into meltdown.”

Bosses’ outfit UK Steel said Chinese dumping of reinforcing steel will account for more than half the British market this year.

UK Steel director Gareth Stace said: “The US and other countries have already moved to prevent cheap Chinese imports distorting their markets and now the EU must do the same and, do so quickly.”

But in a message to workers at the Dalzell and Clydebridge works, where job losses are threatened, the Scottish TUC argued that key threats to the industry could be tackled at Westminster and Holyrood.

“If government really does want to see a flourishing manufacturing sector, then let them deliver a level playing field for steel,” the STUC said.

It called for “strong action on unfair dumping of cheap steel and energy costs” in Chancellor George Osborne’s forthcoming autumn statement and “action … squarely aimed at securing a productive
future for Dalzell and Clydebridge” from the SNP Scottish government.

conradlandin@peoples-press.com