CONGRESS delegates condemned Tata Steel’s “bad deal for steel” today.

Moving an emergency motion on the future of Port Talbot, Community’s Barry Evans, who has worked at the plant for 30 years, slammed Tata for having turned its back on plans unions have put forward to preserve jobs, showing “an unforgiveable and blatant disregard for steelworkers, their families and their communities.”

The Indian multinational plans to shut Port Talbot’s two blast furnaces and build an electric arc furnace, at a cost of 2,800 jobs directly and many more in the supply chain.

The British government had shamefully “given Tata £500 million and accepted thousands of job losses in return,” Mr Evans charged, but “we cannot and will not accept the decimation of our steel industry, the impact of which will be felt far beyond the steelworkers and their families.”

The Welsh government was standing with steelworkers, but the power of the whole movement would be needed to save the “soul of Port Talbot,” Mr Evans said.

Unite’s Steve Surtees pointed to the steelworks’ provision of skilled jobs for successive generations.

“Young people today and those of following generations should have the same opportunity,” he stressed, while GMB’s Tom Hoyles pointed out that unless the sector was saved Britain could wind up “the only country in the G7 that doesn’t produce its own steel.”

The emergency motion passed overwhelmingly, though Swansea TUC delegate Alex Threves criticised it for a lack of ambition, saying the Wales TUC should be an “industrial council of war” planning mass rallies, organisation of support groups and mobilising other workers for solidarity action to force a political decision to save Port Talbot.