Amiens (AFP)
"Justice is long", but "we will get it": more than 800 ex-employees of the Goodyear tire factory in Amiens-Nord returned Tuesday to the Labor Court, contesting the economic motive of their dismissal in 2014, the first hearing in 2018 which did not make it possible to decide.
"We are going to be even stronger than the last time: a demonstration which does not make a doubt on the fact that the closing of our factory, its relocation and our long-term unemployment have only one name: finance!" , launched on Tuesday morning the former CGT leader of the Mickaël Wamen factory, to former employees gathered in the parking lot of the Amiens convention center where this extraordinary audience is relocated.
By 8:00 a.m., several hundred ex-Goodyears had gathered with CGT flags and placards demanding "justice for the 832" former employees, joined by those of the Cargill factory in Haubourdin (North), where a social plan is in preparation, agents of the Lille hospital center as well as the deputies of the Somme François Ruffin and the Seine-Saint-Denis Eric Coquerel (LFI).
The audience opened at 9:00 a.m. in the huge performance hall.
Specializing in the manufacture of agricultural tires, the Goodyear factory in Amiens Nord had closed in January 2014, after a standoff of more than six years between staff and management, resulting in the loss of 1,143 jobs and becoming a symbol of the deindustrialization of workers' bastions.
Again on Tuesday, the 832 ex-employees will claim compensation on the grounds mainly "that their dismissal would be without real and serious cause" but also "for the damage suffered due to the failure of the employer to fulfill his obligation to provide work ".
The first hearing, on October 4, 2018, was attended by 400 to 500 people. But the four industrial tribunal advisers, lay judges representing employees and employers equally, had failed to decide between themselves, prompting the appointment of a professional magistrate known as a "judge-judge".
The lawyer of the former employees, Me Fiodor Rilov, had at the time insisted on the profits at the level of the American group Goodyear, ensuring that in 2014, he had recorded a net profit of 2.5 billion dollars after taxes, "The most colossal amount ever displayed by Goodyear".
The three lawyers of the direction had them, them, on the difficulties since 2007 of the factory "extremely deficit", worsened by the "severe crisis" of 2009, and the net debt of the group of 5.267 billion dollars at the time of the closing.
© 2020 AFP