HUNDREDS of Welsh steelworkers’ jobs were left dangling on the line yesterday after manufacturing firm Tata Steel announced plans to slash up to 400 jobs from its Port Talbot site in South Wales — just weeks after it announced annual global pre-tax profits of £366 million.

The firm’s European chief executive Karl Koehler said it had invested heavily in Port Talbot’s plant in recent years, but predicted low demand driving down prices and profits for several years to come.

“Our business rates in the UK are much higher than other EU countries and our UK energy costs will remain uncompetitive until new mitigation measures come into effect,” he said.

“These proposed changes then are vital if we are to build a competitive future for our Strip Products business in the UK.”

He added that the company would “engage fully” with its workforce, their trade unions and political stakeholders in the “unsettling” weeks to come.

The trade union steel committee comprising GMB, Community and Unite said they recognised the company faced a downturn in European markets.

But chairman Roy Rickhuss said Tata risked dangerous understaffing on its sites as a result of the layoffs.

He said: “Therefore, it is vital that this is not just an exercise to just reduce costs by cutting jobs but takes a considered and objective view as to the numbers required to run and maintain the plant to make steel safely and productively.

“This news also demonstrates that despite the government’s trumpeting of economic recovery, the steel sector remains under real pressure.

“This sector, vital for so much of British manufacturing, must be an area of real focus for the UK’s industrial policy.”

The committee was seeking an urgent meeting with company managers to raise their concerns and reiterate their opposition to compulsory redundancies, he added.

Official figures show unemployment in Port Talbot is already 8.4 per cent, significantly higher than Britain’s average of 7.5 per cent, while manufacturing accounts for roughly one in five jobs in the area.

The talk of further layoffs follows longstanding complaints of reduced hours and pay among the workforce and 500 jobs axed from the site as recently as 2012.

The Welsh Assembly’s Labour government had yet to comment on the crisis at time of writing.

Plaid Cymru AM for South Wales West Bethan Jenkins said she was disappointed to hear that Tata management saw layoffs as inevitable.

“I’d hoped that with the investment and the diversification going on there, we might have had some more imaginative solutions,” she said.