Structural crisis and job destruction in the steel industry: When politics and reality collide

structural change– The German steel industry is in a profound crisis and is a symbol of the structural failure of economic and energy policy control. It’s not just about another branch of industry in transition, but about the collapse of a core industry whose jobs and know-how for generations were the backbone of the industrial location. The causes and consequences of thisDevelopment is multi-layered and alarming.

Competitiveness due to high costs: electricity, gas and bureaucracy

The major locational disadvantages are currently adding to an existential threat. High energy costs, especially in the case of electricity and gas, rob the German steel industry of the last competitiveness on international markets. In a global comparison, the industry is less and less able to produce competitors for orders and customers with world market prices and cheaply. in additionIncreasing bureaucracy costs are coming, which burden the production processes with new specifications and controls. For companies that are already calculating with a thin margin, the political tendency to regulate the frenzy of regulatory is another serious obstacle – many manufacturers can no longer shoulder the additional burdens and are forced to cut job cuts and reductions.

Political denial of reality and the fairy tale of the “Green Steel”

Instead of creating actual relief, politicians are sticking to a risky vision: They are promoting the imminent breakthrough of the so-called “green steel production”. However, this technological utopia, which relies on hydrogen and renewable energies, is nowhere competitive in Europe without enormous subsidies. For companies, this means investment uncertainty and theForced to rely on unsafe future funding instead of being able to calculate with reliable framework conditions. The costs are transfigured in politics, and their effects on the industrial base are deliberately neglected. While the political leaders speak of innovation, companies are breaking at the base whose products are still the foundation of many value chainsare.

Job cuts, social security, and a good job of good work

The impact on employees is dramatic. Well-paid jobs are lost in series, the loss of industrial lojobs affects entire families, cities and regions. The few replacement jobs offered are often in questionable industries, offer significantly poorer wages, hardly any security and little identity. For many, these so-called “bullshit jobs” become socialDescent: Your skills are no longer needed, and prospects for a meaningful professional start are missing. The former industrial backbone thus degenerates into a periphery of a service economy in which only a few can speak of quality work.

Lack of perspectives and loss of social trust

With the clear cut in the steel industry, not only material prosperity disappears, but also the social foundation of rise and social treaty. People who have been part of a proud industry for decades lose their status, income and medium-term perspective. The gap between political promises and lived reality is getting deeper and deeper: whileThe industry calls for support and planning, politicians often only react with symbol politics and innovation phrases without tackling the structural mistakes.

From the failure of industrial policy to devalue work

The job cuts in the steel industry are exemplary for the dramatic consequences of failed energy and location policy. Hope for green visions does not replace viable solutions for an industry that is groaning under massive loads. What remains is a social and economic uprooting: Well-qualified people are deprived of their professional future, theIdentity of entire regions is dwindling, and trust in business, politics and society continues to decline. This is not only the failure of an industry, but a fundamental failure in the care of the value of work and the preservation of productive life perspectives.