Corus - Past, Present and Future

Chris Jackson investigates Corus

The owners of Corus have said that steel workers in Redcar can save their own jobs.

BBC Inside Out's Chris Jackson has travelled to India to meet bosses of Tata Steel to find out the future of the Teesside Cast Products plant.

He took a look at the stark difference between the working conditions of steel workers over there, compared to here.

One Indian worker said the owners of Tata Steel are "like Gods" to him.

Inside Out presenter Chris Jackson explains more

Paul, a Corus worker in Teesside is facing being laid off

The story really kicked off in May, when the consortium that was buying most of the steel made here pulled out of the contract.

Everyone's anger was directed at the consortium, but as time went on, people began asking questions of Tata Steel, the owners of Corus - so I wanted to know if there was more they could be doing?

I went to Jamshedpur, the home of Tata Steel - now this city is an amazing project.

'Corporate social responsibility'

Tata owns not only their steel plant, but the whole city itself, from the roads, to housing, to sports facilities, colleges, even a hospital.

Compared with any other Indian city, it's cleaner, greener and more affluent.

The steel workers pay next to nothing for their living costs and get all manner of benefits for their families.

An industrial sky line under threat in Teesside

This is because Tata Steel has more than a hundred years of what it calls "corporate social responsibility", and the community appreciates it - one worker I spoke to said the owners of Tata Steel are like Gods to him and he pays his respects at the factory gates every day!

Paying off debt

But are there differences in their philosophy in India compared to their treatment of workers here?

Well, when Tata Steel laid off a lot of its workers, it paid them at least their full salary, every month until retirement age.

But that's not the case for workers here on Teesside, who want to know if the company is as keen on looking after them?

So will Tata Steel invest? The short answer is no, that's come from the boss of Tata himself.

And this possibly stems from the time they took over Corus.

You see, Tata was so keen to get Corus and go global, that many experts believe they paid far too much for it.

Chris Jackson talked to outgoing MD Mr Muthuraman

I've been told this means that Tata has no money to invest right now because they're too busy paying off their debt.

But it doesn't go down well with workers here, who know that while their plant is on its knees, Tata are actually building two huge new plants in India.

I got chance to catch up with the outgoing managing director Mr Muthuraman, and was keen to find out about the future of the Redcar plant.

I asked him if the company would invest in Teesside as readily as it does in India and was told the company won't protect and secure the future for the workers here unless the workers cut costs first.

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