design-in-steel

Yesterday Corus announced another 2000 job cuts at UK plants. Now that’s an indication that all sorts of problems are coming for you and me. Yes, we may not be employed directly by Corus, but wherever in the steel industry we are it doesn’t bode well.

Raw materials are an indicator of general industry health

If Corus is suffering; it’s only because we are. In the steel industry we have the unique priviledge of having only one major UK steel supplier. That means we can easily see how well we’re doing, based on how well Corus is doing. In other industries that’s more difficult to see because we have to collate data from lots of suppliers. What these job cuts mean for us is that production is down in a major way. And for every steel worker there are probably two or three workers elsewhere in the industry who will be let go too. Just think about how much steel just one steel-plant worker produces, and how many other people that steel affects: Transporters, Stockists, Fabricators, Draughtsmen, Engineers, Erectors, Support staff… and that’s just within the Structural Steel fabrication business.

Statistics of doom

Other statistics have been pointing to this for some time. Going by the UK Steel Key Statistics 2009 report, steel deliveries to UK stockholders halved between the beginning and end of 2008.

Is there a solution for the steel industry?

So the big question is: what do we do about this? Do we just wait for half of our jobs to just disappear? There seems to be no easy answer. The difficult answer is that we all have to tighten our belts. If there is half as much work around, there is half as much money around, which either means half as many jobs, or we all have to take cuts in pay or work less hours to spread the money across more people.

There’s an AEC industry report due out on 1st July which hopes to set out the way forward. Hopefully it includes a word for the steel industry. You can register your interest in the report here: Thriving in the downturn report.