THE result of the ballot on changes to the British Steel Pension scheme may have given the feeling that the worst of the crisis engulfing the industry for the past year is over.

But a closer look shows that this is far from an end to the threat to steel-making in Britain.

Workers in the industry voted overwhelmingly to accept large reductions in their pension payouts in return for a commitment by Tata for £1 billion investment in its remaining plants in the country, including a promise that the blast furnaces in Port Talbot will continue production into the next decade and that there would be no job losses.

Despite the vote to accept the changes to the pension scheme, real concerns remain about the future of Tata in Britain.

These concerns were expressed by Unite general secretary Len McCluskey.

Speaking after the announcement of the ballot result, he said: “Our members at Tata have not accepted the company’s proposals on pensions, jobs, investment and production lightly.

“They, their families and communities have faced huge uncertainty over their jobs and livelihoods for more than a year and have made great sacrifices to ensure the UK’s world-class steel industry has a future.

“Tata Steel must now honour it’s commitments on investment and job security. Anything less would be a betrayal. The UK government also has a duty to step up and support steel.

“The recent revelations that steel is a low priority for ministers in their Brexit negotiations is shameful.”

The next step in the restructuring of the industry will be to restart the stalled negotiations with ThyssenKrupp to establish a joint venture and industry sources have noted that share prices of both Tata and ThyssenKrupp have stabilised following the vote on pensions based on the hope that a tie up between the two would lead to cuts in steel capacity in Europe.

Restarting the negotiations will however be fraught with difficulty arising from the pension scheme.

Although Tata has secured the required reductions in pension payouts they remain responsible for the scheme.

ThyssenKrupp has made it very clear that it will not entertain any merger if it means that the company has to take responsibility for the scheme. Currently the scheme has liabilities of around £15bn.

Tata’s plan for dealing with this is to attempt to spin the scheme off into a stand-alone entity.

To be able to do this, however, the company will have to demonstrate to the Pensions Regulator that it is insolvent; it seems unlikely that it will be able to do this.

The reason for this is not hard to see. In March of last year Tata announced that it was going to sell off or close its entire British operation. By June it had done an about-turn and decided to hang on to its primary production and seek a joint venture with Thyssenkrupp.

The change of mind was prompted by a worldwide rise in the price of steel, a global reduction in steel production and the drop in the value of the pound occasioned by the vote to leave the EU, making exports more competitive.

The outcome of these factors has meant that Tata suddenly finds itself in profit, which will make it almost impossible to persuade the Pensions Regulator that it is insolvent.

This in turn has prompted ThyssenKrupp’s finance chief to comment that “one must give Tata time” but declined to say how much time it would be.

It would be laughable that Tata’s plans for dumping the pension scheme were derailed by the globalised capitalist market were it not for the fact that contained within it are such serious potential consequences for the survival of Britain’s steel industry.

For the moment it looks as if Tata is stuck with the pension scheme whether it likes it or not. Any joint venture with ThyssenKrupp remains stalled until this can be sorted out, which looks increasingly unlikely at the moment.

It comes as no surprise that throughout the whole crisis the government has been as good as absent. An absence underlined by not giving any weight to the steel industry in its Brexit negotiations.

Despite the problems of offloading the pension scheme, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the Pensions Regulator may be persuaded to allow Tata to do it.

Indeed just such a solution was under serious consideration in June of last year by Sajid Javid, then business secretary.

In the wake of the vote to leave the EU, Javid’s role was shifted and his replacement, Greg Clarke, ruled out such a move.

This however does not mean that the idea could not be resurrected. Should that happen, then it is probable that every employer pension scheme in the country would attempt to follow suit with devastating results for workers in those company schemes.

The current negotiations over Vauxhall between General Motors and the French PAS Group look set to stall because of the pension scheme.

With over 1,500 members and an estimated deficit of around £1bn, the PSA Group is unlikely to want to take on the pension liabilities.

How long will it be before General Motors holds a gun to the heads of the workers at Ellesmere Port and Luton over the pension scheme in much the same way as Tata has done?

And how long will it be before the government caves in to the demands of the big corporations to allow them to dump pension schemes irrespective of their solvency or otherwise?

Whatever happens to the steel industry over the coming months, the vote by workers to accept the changes to the pension scheme does not bring the crisis to an end.

All the signs are that it will drag on, with continuing uncertainty for the workforce.

We must all be ready to support steelworkers in their struggle to defend their industry, jobs and livelihoods.

• Laurence Platt is Midlands Communist Party trade union organiser.