Is job preservation a good counter-argument to the need to adapt a company's activity to the ecological requirements of our time? Cécile Duflot, director general of the NGO Oxfam France, and former national secretary of Europe Écologie-les Verts (EELV), was the guest of Radio Open, Wednesday morning, to answer questions from listeners of Europe 1.
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Jean-Jérôme's question
When Bruno Le Maire (Minister of the Economy) says that Air France must become the greenest airline by cutting lines, but then we learn that jobs are going to be cut, it looks like a false good sorry, right?
Cécile Duflot's answer
"Air France and the other companies must evolve. Nothing says that the only job of Air France is to fly planes. SNCF, which historically was created to run trains, runs buses and trucks for years, and has competed with road freight itself.
Air France is an airline and there will always be planes to go to the other side of the globe. The planes and the mode of propulsion must therefore both evolve, and a whole bunch of journeys made by plane no longer be. The environmental cost that we will all pay by maintaining the current system will be too expensive. The companies which owned stagecoaches on horseback evolved, changed activities. Air France must do the same and I am sure it can do it. This applies to the entire industrial world. We must stop putting on blinkers: companies have the capacity, thanks to the wealth of know-how of their employees, to evolve.
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At some point we will find ourselves facing the wall. Anticipating this situation is also a matter of respect for employees. The question of employment is also that of the evolution of employment, training, the evolution of companies ... Not pulling the rope until the end.
We have examples in history: that of the textile industry and the mines that disappeared in France. When you don't tell people the truth, you end up in social disasters. Hence the importance of the transformation of companies, of the transformation of the automobile sector as well, but also the change in the objects that we produce. For example, continuing to produce SUVs, or having, like some automobile companies, a strategy to suppress the construction of small vehicles that consume less energy is absurd. It goes against common sense and what we have to do to face the climate crisis. "