Workers at the PSA Peugeot Citroën plant in Aulnay-sous-Bois are angry, as are their counterparts at the plant in Rennes.
Their anger, initially directed at the PSA management and its decision to shut down the plant, is now turning toward the French authorities, deemed too timid in their response to the closure.
Workers have been called to take strike action on Thursday, to hold a demonstration outside the Elysée Palace.
A small reminder. In July of this year, PSA Peugeot Citroën sent shock waves through the country when it announced a restructuring plan entailing 8000 job losses in France and the closure in 2014 of the Aulnay-sous-Bois plant near Paris.
According to the plan, 6500 employees will face compulsory redundancy and 1500 will be redeployed.
Despite announcing plans to launch a new vehicle at the Rennes plant in 2016, the management’s restructuring plan has nonetheless come as a heavy blow to the French auto industry.
PSA is an emblematic group and news of the shutdown initially met with disbelief. Incredulity soon turned to anger among the affected workers, who have been firmly criticising the group’s strategy for a number of years.
"We have already accepted the unacceptable," said Philippe Julien, the CGT secretary for PSA Aulnay.
"In 2008, resources were cut by half for the same level of production.
We went from 7,000 to 4,500 employees, including temporary staff.
All that was ’for our own good, to safeguard our future’. We can see what the future is now.
It’s to put everyone out on the street after making them do the work of two people."
The workers are devastated. Many are faced with the anguish of having to look for a new job in the midst of an economic crisis.
Many couples, moreover, could be left jobless at the same time.
A whole section of the population in this region of Paris will in fact be made redundant.
Other sectors of the local economy will also suffer the knock-on effects of thousands of people losing their jobs.
French trade union organisations have been closely following the PSA case and want to discuss it in a tripartite meeting with the French authorities and the group’s management.
They have recalled that back in May, in the run up to the second round of the election, François Hollande had promised to meet with the employees, but no plans have as yet been made for him to visit the Aulnay-sous-Bois plant.
For the French government, the restructuring plan, the cuts in staff and the reorganising of the PSA’s industrial activities are inevitable in light of the group’s financial difficulties, but it has nevertheless pointed to the flaws in the group’s strategy, which has left it isolated for too long.
Despite this announcement by the authorities, the workers’ anger has now turned toward the government, which has let them down.
It had promised change and is hitherto struggling to conceal its impotence.
The PSA Peugeot Citroën workers from Aulnay-sous-Bois are now set to take their grievances to the very seat of power.
A strike has been called for Thursday, to take their protest to the Elysée Palace, where a delegation will be received by President François Hollande, according to an announcement made by the CGT workplace representative, Jean Pierre Mercier.
The president, who made a commitment in front of representatives from the La Janais-Rennes plant to "do everything in his power to curb the scale of job losses" at PSA, has every interest in giving assurances to the workers from Aulnay-sous-Bois if he does not want see the emergence of a lasting protest in France.
