Which union would that be? The CBI?

Let's be honest, what's happening in Redcar is symptomatic of the general failure of free market capitalism and of the Conservative's commitment to anywhere outside of their constituencies. Frankly, they're not interested. With the current electoral system they don't have to bother with anywhere like that. They can keep pumping money into where their MPs are. The corporate financiers that fund the Tories get their billions of profit from all over the world. They won't lose sleep overnight about the plight of thousands in the north of England. The only thing that stops the whole thing collapsing is your average small and mid sized business entrepreneurs who continue to seek opportunity in the UK. They're the people that put money into local economies and bring it in from overseas. Your average multinational, as we know, minimises its tax liability (to the point of avoidance) and sucks money from local economies into various financial institutions, which do the same.

Only the other week I was reading about Comet and how the venture capitalists that bought it paid £2. When it was liquidated, the workers had to get taxpayers money to pay them redundancy (statutory I believe not enhanced company terms) whilst the venture capitalists got £114m from it.

The workers got some back of the monies they and the previous company had put in i.e. employees/employers NI one of the reasons NI is set at such a high level!! is your £114m (50m given by Kesa to cover insurance claims + 64m recovered from the admin) net of the £74m HAL wrote off?

Hmm' they should just tug their forelocks whilst others made a killing for doing nothing.

If what Redcar produces cannot be sold, is it being argued that "the taxpayer" should pay for the pointless production? For how long? How do we know their will ever be a profitable market for the production? Wouldn't it be better to put resources into something more economically viable that could enhance people's living standards? We've lost millions of jobs in primary and secondary industries over the last 60+ years but have more people employed than ever. A lot may not be in highly paid jobs, but they never were - most jobs though being less dirty and dangerous than those they replaced.

We don't have a free market. We have a system of crony capitalism, that's geared towards big government, and big business.

Maybe the workers at Redcar could have accepted a wage reduction, short weeks etc. They have simply priced the business out of production via wage and other demands, surely?

yeh right, which directors/owners/shareholders were prepared to take a cut?.

Why is it the right wing say improve your lot in life and income, but when others do they whinge and whine?

Why are bad business decisions and management the fault of the "workers"?

Whatever happens someone will make a killing from this closure, but I'll bet it wont be any of the "workers" who actually created the wealth of the business.

utter rhubarb, the workers were given an opportunity to earn via someone else taking a risk. it's about time "the workers" remembered what they are there to do, WORK.

This is not a failure of free market capitalism. It is the knock on effect of the slow down world trade led by China that has caused a collapse in global steel prices which are kept down by state intervention mainly in Communist China. Furthermore what has been the final straw is the higher costs of electricity incurred by UK companies because of the nonsense green policies of successive governments which has seen a much higher cost of UK electricity due to climate change policies.

So it is not a level playing field.