Lannion (France) (AFP)
Several thousand people demonstrated late Saturday morning in Lannion (Côtes-d'Armor) to protest against the loss of 402 jobs on the Nokia site which plans in total to cut more than a thousand jobs in France.
"Tregor standing up against job cuts", "In ten years, this is the 13th plan", "Young people hired, already fired" or "keep Nokia jobs in Lannion", could we read on the banners or placards brandished by the demonstrators.
For unions, the current plan aims ultimately to the disappearance of the Lannion site, which will employ less than 400 employees if it is implemented, but also the disappearance of Nokia from the French industrial landscape.
With Nokia's departure, "Lannion, a historic bastion of telecommunications, would lose part of its identity", said a trade unionist during a speech before the start of the demonstration, stressing the negative effects of such a departure on the territory that would be dedicated "to tourism and seasonal jobs".
A 24-year-old employee, who came from Marseille to settle in Lannion to work at Nokia, expressed her disappointment. Like her, more than 200 young engineers have been recruited on this site since the acquisition by Nokia in 2016. These 402 redundancies are "unjustified, incomprehensible, intolerable and unbearable," summed up a trade unionist.
In the demonstration, which gathered around 5,000 people according to the CFDT, several elected officials wearing their tricolor scarves were present, but also employees of the company Hop! of the Morlaix site (Finistère), threatened with closure, noted an AFP journalist.
On June 22, Nokia announced its restructuring plan in France with 1,233 job cuts, including 402 in this Breton city of 20,000 inhabitants where, according to elected officials, Nokia is the city's 3rd employer.
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