GE Vernova employees were fearing a new social plan. They received confirmation of this on Thursday, September 19. But it turns out to be of an unexpected scale. The company, which brings together the energy activities of General Electric, announced the elimination of 360 jobs in Loire-Atlantique, at its sites in Montoir-de-Bretagne and Saint-Herblain, near Nantes.
In detail, the CFE-CGC states that this plan aims to eliminate 220 jobs out of 383 in Saint-Herblain, where the engineering, supply chain, project management and maintenance support teams of the offshore branch are located. As for the Montoir-de-Bretagne plant, which assembles wind turbine nacelles, it should lose 140 jobs out of 420.
291 wind turbines to be delivered
This plant is the only one in the world to assemble the nacelles of GE Vernova’s offshore wind turbines, in this case the 14 MW Haliade-X. Management confirmed that this plan is part of “envisioned transformations of the offshore wind business worldwide”. The challenge is to “transform our offshore wind business into a streamlined, more efficient and more profitable business within GE Vernova”.
In a notice sent to staff representatives, the group announced its intention to cut 900 jobs out of the 1,700 in its offshore wind activity. For CFE-CGC, this plan comes at the worst possible time, since the factory is due to deliver 291 Haliade-X offshore wind turbines by 2027, mainly for the Dogger Bank wind farm in the United Kingdom and, to a lesser extent, in the United States. This is more in two years than the 201 nacelles manufactured by the factory over the past ten years. However, the factory has not recorded any orders beyond these two years.
Already in March, the factory, built in 2014 by Alstom and then taken over by GE, announced its intention to lay off 600 temporary and subcontracting employees.Nearly 1,000 jobs will have disappeared in just one year in this region, jeopardizing a key sector of our energy future.“, says the CFE-CGC. “It is an ecosystem that we are destroying.“, adds Cyrille Gohier, GE Wind France delegate, pointing out the aberration of closing this strategic site, guarantor of French sovereignty in this sector, in view of the country’s ambitions in terms of offshore wind power. In the longer term, it is a pure and simple closure of the plant that this union also fears. “This decision only confirms the desire of GE Vernova, under the direction of its American management, to relocate this activity to the United States and to gradually withdraw from France and Europe.“, adds the CGT.
The sustainability of the site in question
This fear is shared by regional elected officials.The information that was transmitted to me by the management and by the company’s trade union organisations gives rise to fears that further job cuts could still occur, or even that the sustainability of the site could be threatened, particularly due to the absence of orders since 2023.“, writes Mathias Tavel, LFI MP for Saint-Nazaire in a letter addressed on September 16 to Prime Minister Michel Barnier. The elected official, who has been alerting the government for several months about the risk of the factory closing, recommends “the nationalization of the company, to ensure the sustainability of this site, which is essential to the national interest, as well as the preservation of jobsยป.
Source: www.usinenouvelle.com
