The Australian Steel Town That Saved Itself From Bankruptcy

The Town That Saved Itself: In 2016, the Australian steel town of Whyalla was on the verge of collapse, as the centre of the town's economy went bust. Yet steelworkers made a great sacrifice to save their jobs and their community.

The Whyalla steelworks ran into trouble when its managing company Arrium found that the steel business was moving from commodity to specialised steel. "We had another round of redundancies and it was savage", remembers steelworker Larisa White. Residents feared that, should the steelworks be forced to close, the town's economy would shut down with it. "There was the possibility of a mass exodus", says steelworker Stuart Monroe. When Arrium suggested a 10% pay cut in the steelworkers' wages to save the company, the idea was first rejected with hostility, but workers soon found it was the only solution. Whyalla's survival was officially sealed, however, when British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta suddenly decided to invest in the steelworks. "It was a diamond in the rough."

Follow us on Twitter:

ABC Australia – Ref. 7455

[thekiwicanuck]

This hits close to home. It took me six months to find work when I got back to Western Australia - at a foundry pouring steel and I love it. Aussies do not appreciate how good they have it. Your counterparts around the world don't have money for V8s, smokes, and slabs of piss, so don't throw your toys out of the crib when someone suggests a pay cut to save your job..

[Troggedemic]

"Saved itself" with the help of a massively wealthy foreign businessman. It's a feel-good-story, but the 10% cuts were what got them sold, what saved them was Gupta.

[jakebryant]

Australia needs to stand by and expand it

[SafetyAngel]

God bless Mr Gupta for having the business foresight to see that the steel works was a diamond in the rough. It is refreshing to see someone with the wealth that he has to still have a genuine care factor about the workers and the community . The Australian government has a lot to learn from this man. This also goes to show that if employers bothered to look after their staff they will get happy hard worker threefold. Gratitude not greed is the seed for growth

[dwayneblair]

Thank you mr gupta ..what an inspireing story

[paraschivlaurentiu]

Why that country music? Is that to say that Aussies are like the American country people?

[gigsrouiy]

Union workers want to be paid unicorn lines wages while the rest of the world exploding into low wages it's unrealistic they're not calculating in real rate of inflation and not recognizing that bubbles were formed as a result of Monopoly massive pyramids system in the financial industry as well as the overall economic world monopolies. And that's going to create the inability for troop price discovery on Goods services, specifically labor cost, many unions are government unions will believe they're entitled to it increases in wages that the artificial centrally planned economy of the world cannot simply expedite on a sustainable long-term method. It only presume that the money is going to come from somewhere but little do they realize go to sleep investor that risks the capital to open up a large business that needs to squeeze profits out of thin air that are just not there to give to the unrealistic employee. They have these unrealistic expectations cuz they don't understand the whole world is a mess of Ponzi scheme where bottlenecks and the equity of economic participation concentrated only in a few hands and from there came about this misconception that it's the medium-size even businesses and are entitled to give them what they want even if it doesn't reflect the true reality of the global economic and financial system. They ought to do more reading that is granted through their free time from their exorbitant wages to understand the world economy on the nature of its mass of Ponzi artificial nature. It's truly the absence of economic freedom and economic and employment paradigm's that believes that it is Equitable feasible and manageable to produce these enormous wages beyond the capacity of the economy to carry. They are like spoiled little children whose parents took a hit to their income earning capacity if the children are completely oblivious to this. Honest examples that demonstrate the insular mentality within union workers understanding and overall frame of reference as it relates do everything that unions entail both on a moral level and ethical level as well as realistic economic Financial world situation.

[tiocfaidharla]

When aussies say know or no it sounds like, nayew to me.