For Sophie Binet, the general secretary of the CGT, “the month of December promises to be red” on the social front, “and it’s not Santa’s red”. On the occasion of a press conference dedicated to the preservation of jobs in industry in the face of the wave of social plans affecting the sector, the trade unionist called on Wednesday, November 27, the employees threatened with dismissal “to go on strike now and occupy their factory”, without waiting for the day of strike organized by the union on a national scale on December 12. This will be an opportunity for the CGT to support rallies of employees in front of industrial sites in danger, prefectures and even perhaps in front of Bercy. The different branches of the union have also planned other employee mobilizations throughout the month of December.
This tone and these offensive approaches aim to support the union’s request to the government to put in place an emergency plan for the industry, while Prime Minister Michel Barnier is expected to unveil it on Friday, November 29, during a trip to Limoges , first measures to deal with social plans, according to Les Echos.
Nearly 30,000 job losses anticipated in industry
For the CGT, announcements of job cuts have accelerated in recent months with more than 120 plans over the period from July to November 2024, including just under 100 between September and November. In total, the union has identified 286 job reduction plans between September 2023 and November 2024. In the industry, 28,832 jobs are threatened or have been eliminated over this period, by withdrawing the workforce of temporary workers and subcontractors . Including the indirect jobs linked to these eliminated or suspended positions, the CGT adds between 57,000 and 130,000 affected jobs. For the union, this count reflects in particular “the industrial breakdown underway in the automobile sector”, with more generally 13,000 direct jobs threatened or eliminated in metallurgy and more than 7,000 in chemicals.
These figures should be considered with caution, because the study counts, for example, 2,000 jobs threatened at GRDF, but this volume of jobs would in reality be threatened over a period of four years. And the figure is contested by management, which instead cites 300 jobs affected. “The nature of the eliminated or threatened jobs identified by the CGT is not systematically known and may include a portion of temporary jobs in particular,” the study specifies. But for Sophie Binet, the figures for her organization are underestimated in any case, due to the absence of CGT union representatives in many companies.
The State shareholder expected at the turning point by the CGT
Faced with this observation, “we must act immediately” so as not to “lose our industry”alerted the union official. The CGT came up with a three-step response. Its emergency plan includes multiple measures, such as lowering the threshold for applying the Florange law of March 2014 to all companies with more than 50 employees, while the current obligation to find a buyer is today applies to companies with more than 1000 employees. This measure would be coupled with a ban on any reduction in workforce during the process, with possible recourse to partial unemployment for employers lacking cash flow, and a possibility for staff representatives to contact Bpifrance to study a possible participation of the public bank in a takeover project.
The CGT also calls on the State to position itself “as a guarantor of the future of our industrial heritage” by entering into the capital of industries in difficulty, up to the implementation of nationalizations, or by intervening more energetically in large groups where he is a shareholder. The CGT, for example, has Arkema in its sights, 7.2% of whose capital was held by the Bpifrance Lac 1 fund at the end of 2023. The union would see this company buying its supplier Vencorex, in receivership since last September.
A French but also European battle
Secondly, the union calls on the government to organize industry meetings to arrive at a bill proposed by parliamentarians, outside the National Rally, in order to succeed in reindustrialization. For the CGT, this legal text would be an opportunity to take up its proposals to make principals responsible in relation to subcontractors, for example that of integrating representatives of the latter into the group committees of large companies. This legislative vehicle could also take up the idea defended by Sophie Binet of professional and environmental social security.
Finally, the CGT intends to defend an “upward” harmonization of social and environmental standards at the European level and modulate customs duties abroad based on compliance with these standards. But while the Minister Delegate in charge of Industry Marc Ferracci presents this Thursday, November 28 in Brussels France’s proposals to respond to the challenge of competitiveness of the continent and in particular of its steelmakers, “focusing on Europe should not prevent us from providing answers at the national level”, warns Sophie Binet.
Source: www.usinenouvelle.com
