Amiens (AFP)

"Six years later, we will obtain justice!": A military pass was replayed Tuesday before the labor courts between some 800 ex-employees of the Goodyear factory in Amiens-North who contest the economic motive of their dismissal in 2014, management still pleading financial difficulties.

"Comrades you have grown old, changed, because what we experienced was of incredible violence", but "we are still the Goodyear" and today's meeting is "historic", launched at 8:30 am Mickaël Wamen, ex-CGT leader of the factory, in front of several hundred people in the parking lot of the convention center in Amiens (Somme), where the audience was relocated.

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, causing the loss of 1,143 jobs.

Today the 832 ex-employees claim compensation mainly on the grounds that "their dismissal would be without real and serious cause" but also for the damage linked to "failure of the employer to fulfill his obligation to provide work".

As in 2018, their lawyer Fiodor Rilov fought for more than four hours, insisting on the profits at the time at the level of the American group Goodyear, to which belonged Goodyear Dunlop Tires France (DGTF), in a case "emblematic of the refusal of workers to let themselves be crushed during the dismantling of their work tool, while simultaneously, their employer makes colossal profits! "

- Dismantling "in stages" -

"The notion of safeguarding competitiveness", invoked by Goodyear to close, "supposes an objective threat", but in its accounts for 2014, the group "does not mention any underperformance whatsoever!", the lawyer got carried away. He cited, among other things, the 2014 operating profit, "established at $ 1.7 billion", or the after-tax net profit which reached him "2.5 billion", figures "record".

Goodyear was also able to pay "$ 75 million in dividends" to shareholders, he said, also citing a document from management at the time which stated: "thanks to this closure action, we will improve our operating profit in the Europe zone up to 75 million per year ".

He finally judged that the closure had been "prepared" in 2007 with the announcements of site reorganization and a drop in production, Goodyear proceeding "step by step to the dismantling of the factory" with a view to "transferring its activity to sites located in Germany and Poland ".

"Yes", in 2014 the situation "was a little in the process of recovery", but "not at all up to the debt of the group" or "that of the competitors!" Replied Me Joël Granger, lawyer for the management, seeing in the demonstration of its opponent a "misunderstanding of the accounts".

He notably recalled the "difficulties" since 2007 and the "delay" taken by this "deficit" factory, aggravated by the 2009 crisis, and a debt of 5.267 billion dollars at the time of closure.

Me Granger also cited the report of the Secafi expertise firm, mandated in 2013 by the CSE, which confirmed "the significant losses in Europe" - of 22.5 million euros in 2012 editor's note - of the agrarian activity of the group .

"Management has tried everything" to "avoid this drama", he said, recounting at length the attempt to reorganize work in 2007 with a view to "investing", the proposed social plan in 2008, the attempt to partial sale to the American Titan, and the failure of all negotiations with the unions.

During his argument, disapproving whispers or exclamations of anger were sometimes heard, the room remaining rather calm, encouraged in this sense by Me Rilov.

© 2020 AFP