Mendes Stengs
Mendes began working at Hoogovens when he was 21, at the harbour where coils of steel are loaded onto ships. For three years, he moved around the site as an on-call worker before being offered a permanent contract at the power plant. He subsequently worked at the coke plant, the cold rolling mill and the steelworks. A few years at each location, moving further and further away from the entrance, but never truly escaping the noise and the smell.
After twelve years, he left to work for the Province of North Holland and later for the regional environmental agency. As an environmental inspector, however, he was not permitted to supervise the same industrial site he knew inside and out. “I thought: now I can finally do something about what I have always seen,” he says. “But the inspection service regarded it as a potential conflict of interest.” In his view, this was a deliberate political choice on their part.
In 2017, he returned to Tata Steel. “I hoped it would feel like coming home,” he says, “but it no longer felt like the same company.” In January 2024, he was dismissed after publicly criticising the company in the media. After those same media outlets turned his dismissal into a public scandal, he was allowed to return six weeks later. Since then, he has officially remained under contract but has had no actual position. “I do go there,” he says. “But I still don’t really have any work. They call it ‘temporary alternative work’. Another year has passed already.”
He gives a brief, weary smile. “It sums up the company: more reorganising than repairing.”
According to Stengs, it is not steel production that has become stuck, but the system surrounding it.
“Staff shortages? They were created,” he says.
“For years, they recruited too few permanent shift workers and pushed too many people out. The result is factories full of temporary contractors who leave again after a year. In departments where experience can literally mean the difference between safety and danger.”
His tone sharpens. “Leadership has been replaced by manageability. Everything has to be recorded on a form. Anyone who speaks up gets an ‘M’ on their performance review.”
He has also lost much of his confidence in the organisations intended to provide internal checks and balances.
“The trade union does nothing,” he says.
“All it talks about now is wages, not working conditions.” He was a member of the works council but was manoeuvred out through underhanded means. “The works council does not dare to ask difficult questions. Information is presented from the top down; it is not discussed.”
“At Tata, other people do the thinking for you. My father, who also worked here, used to say that. And he was right.”
His criticism extends beyond the factory gates. At the environmental agency, he saw how the authorities and the company maintained an equilibrium by making sure that neither side did too much. “People looked the other way for years. Tata knew exactly how to exploit that. A violation would be identified, but the factory would not receive the inspection letter until two weeks later. In the meantime, the violation simply continued.”
When he spoke to several members of the Wijk aan Zee village council one day, he did not regard it as crossing over to “the other side”, but as a logical step. “Those residents often understand what is happening better than the people in Tata’s boardroom,” he says. “They have knowledge, figures and facts. It is not hysteria. They are simply right.”
“The problem is not the steel. The problem is that nobody listens.”
He is frustrated by the company’s greenwashing. “They talk about sustainability, but they do not listen to the people breathing in the pollution.”
Nevertheless, he wants the company to survive—just in a different form. “Without steel, you don’t have a country,” he says. “But if you continue operating the plant, you also have to be honest about its costs. Instead of putting an annual target of seven million tonnes of steel on the wall, production should be based on actual demand. And investment should be directed towards the places where the surrounding community is genuinely suffering. Don’t just sweep things up—replace the installations.”
The power, he says, lies with people who never enter the site, rather than with local residents. “At the top of the company, people line their pockets. At the bottom, workers walk through the smoke wearing masks. And there is nothing left in between.
No connection, no trust.”
Alongside his work, Stengs is a municipal councillor and the founder of GROENSTAAL!, a local political party seeking to connect industrial policy with housing and quality of life. “I may change political parties from time to time,” he says, “but I don’t change my position.”
He looks up thoughtfully. “The company has been hollowed out,” he says. “The knowledge has gone, and so has the money. And yet it still hasn’t collapsed. That may be the greatest miracle of all.” Then, after a brief silence: “Things have to change. Not because The Hague says so, but because carrying on like this is no longer possible.”