Choisy-le-Roi (AFP)

"No to the scrapping of the job engine": hundreds of employees, elected officials and residents of Choisy-le-Roi demonstrated on Saturday in the streets of this Parisian suburb city to defend its Renault factory, which the car manufacturer plans to close, AFP journalists found.

The procession gathered around a thousand people, according to union sources.

By presenting last week a plan of 2 billion euros in savings over three years, the president of Renault, Jean-Dominique Senard, had announced that the plant in Choisy-le-Roi would be the only one of the 14 sites industrial companies in France to be closed by 2022.

Hard hit by the crisis, the manufacturer, which plans 15,000 job cuts including 4,600 in France, will benefit from a loan guaranteed by the state of 5 billion euros, validated last Tuesday by the government.

"This money must be used to maintain employment and develop it," thundered Saturday at the start of the procession, the general secretary of the CGT, Philippe Martinez, himself an employee of Renault, already come to show his support for the personnel of Choisy Wednesday during of a spontaneous manifestation.

The activity of this factory inaugurated in 1949, which employs some 260 employees in the renovation and reconditioning of engines and gearboxes, must be transferred to that of Flins (Yvelines), about 60 km away.

"We will not move!" Chanted employees in Force Ouvrière, the factory's first union. "They want to move us like pawns. But it doesn't work like that. They don't see the disaster in the families," said Samir Slim, FO representative.

"We didn't have the Covid, but we have the rage," said AFP Frédéric, who has worked at Choisy for 20 years. Having learned the news of the closure of his factory "on the radio, going to work", he says he is "disappointed" but will not "let go": "We do not want to go to Flins, Renault Choisy is a small family, there's a story. "

A delegation from the group's general management, who came to the factory on Thursday and Friday, then on strike, "heard us, but we will have to fight so that no one is left on the side of the road," said Maud, who has also worked for Renault for two decades.

- "Factory in good health -

He considered it "unacceptable" that the State, the largest shareholder (15.01%) of Renault, abandons the only factory in the group "in the outer suburbs" of Paris, stressing that we could not "turn it around" 70 years of "industrial life.

In a few hoots, the LREM deputy for the constituency, Jean François Mbaye, considered "inconceivable" that this "factory in good health" should disappear. Its maintenance, "we asked for it and we will get it," he risked.

"No to break the job engine", "Choisy chooses Renault", could be read on banners. And on the yellow vest of a protester: "Senard, creator of the unemployed".

© 2020 AFP