REPORTAGE
The French car manufacturer Renault, in financial difficulty, whose situation has worsened with the health crisis of the Covid-19, announced Friday the loss of about 15,000 jobs worldwide, including 4,600 in France, as part of '' a savings plan of more than 2 billion euros over three years. The plan should affect four sites on French territory: Caudan (Morbihan), Choisy-le-Roi (Val-de-Marne), Dieppe (Seine-Maritime) and Maubeuge (North). This Friday, after a stressful CSE and after a factory blockage since Monday, employees of the Foundry of Brittany (FDB) are relieved: the site will not be closed.
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The involvement of Jean-Yves Le Drian
"First thing: no closure of FDB, second thing: no plan to take over FDB" announced Maël Le Goff, general secretary of the CGT of the Foundry of Brittany to the cheers of his comrades. Established since 1965 in Caudan, the site, taken over in 2009 by Renault, produces raw and machined foundry parts for the automotive industry, according to the automotive group's website. It employs around 400 people.
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The news is positive but the FDB will have to diversify its activity to remain active in the long term. "We are going to look at all of the feasible cast iron parts for the automobile market in the broadest sense of the term, which could include agricultural machinery, large trucks, buses, etc.", explains Laurent Galmard, general manager of the Foundry. "This is the necessary condition to make the Foundry of Brittany profitable."
Another actor will be attentive to this profitability: the Breton Minister of Foreign Affairs and former mayor of Lorient, Jean-Yves Le Drian. While the closure seemed to have taken place on Thursday, he entered this file and changed the situation in a few hours.
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"We must pay tribute to the man that is Mr. Le Drian, who built his career in Brittany and more particularly in Lorient", welcomes Patrice Faure, prefect of Morbihan. "Who knows this business better than he does? Obviously, he weighed heavily on this decision." Blocked since Monday, the factory will restart, the urgency being to find new customers.
"A management promise"
Of the 14 industrial sites in France, "only one site by 2022" will be closed, that of Choisy-le-Roi (Val-de-Marne), which employs 260 people, assured the president of the group, Jean- Dominique Senard, at a press conference
"It is not a big site compared to the other Renault sites in France. It is the smallest but it has a specificity which is the circular economy", explains Mariette Rih, central union delegate FO at Renault. "We know very well that the environmental footprint of car manufacturers obliges us to take into account the impact of our activities on the environment. And what we find to be a form of mess is that there are skills, experience on this site which has been part of the circular economy for years. "
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The automaker assured that the departures would be voluntary and that no dry layoffs would take place. "It is a promise from management, in any case it will be the fight of FO", assures Mariette Rih, relieved after the group's declarations which assured this Friday that nothing would be done for any of the sites concerned without the social partners and the local collectives. "I think it's important after all to have heard it this morning."
The economy project presented by Renault finally includes the end of automobile production in Flins (Yvelines), at the end of the Zoe after 2024. The factory, which currently has 2,600 employees, will be converted and will recover the activity of Choisy-le-Roi site for recycling parts. As for the Dieppe plant, which also employs nearly 400 people, the group said it had opened "a reflection on the reconversion of the plant, at the end of the production of the Alpine A110". Finally, a "pole of excellence" in the North is envisaged with the merger of the Douai and Maubeuge sites.