CONTRACT workers devastated by the closure of Redcar steelworks have been awarded a share of £700,000 by an employment judge.

Staff at the Hargreaves Services company handled raw materials and ran the coke ovens at the SSI-owned steelworks which closed a year ago at a cost of their jobs.

Now 154 of the Hargreaves workers who were made redundant have been awarded the pay-out by an employment judge following a five-day tribunal.

The judge ruled that Hargreaves must pay the staff the money because he agreed with a Community Union argument that they weren’t consulted properly at the time of the plant closure last year.

He said Hargreaves must pay the staff the equivalent of seven weeks’ full pay.

A spokesman from Hargreaves said: “The closure of SSI has had a significant impact on all those involved. Hargreaves was a major supplier to the steelworks and was also one of those impacted.

“At the time, the business worked with stakeholders to exhaust all possible means of saving jobs and keeping operations going.”

Paul Warren, community representative for the Community Union who was also chairman of a multi-union workers’ representation body at SSI, said: “This is a major victory for the Community Union and the Hargreaves’ workers. We didn’t agree that the consultation process had been done properly and that had to be dealt with.

“I’m really pleased that it won’t be capped either and they’ll get their full pay. This is what being in a trade union is all about.”

More than 2,000 steelworkers directly employed by SSI lost their jobs as a result of the closure along with a further 850 in the supply chain.

A report earlier this month showed that many former employees have have been forced to accept major pay cuts in order to find new jobs.

The SSI Task Force report said many former employees at Redcar’s SSI UK are living different lives despite £24m funding to mitigate the effects of the company’s liquidation.

However, the report said the vast majority of the 2,150 people who claimed benefit in the aftermath of SSI’s failure are now off welfare payments and into work or training, with £6.2m of taxpayers’ cash also committed to helping staff retrain at colleges across the region.

Durham-based Hargreaves company, was left with coal and coke stocks of about £14m following the liquidation of SSI.

It also expected to sustain a £1.5m cost for redundancy payments and demobilisation costs.