Hambach (France) (AFP)
Three hundred Smart employees, in Hambach (Moselle), stopped production Thursday morning and gathered in front of the communication center where an extraordinary social and economic committee (CSE) takes place with the management of Daimler, who wishes to sell the site .
"Everyone is there to point out our disappointment. No one expected it. Some, like me, were happy to be seated on a chair when they heard the news so as not to fall," said the AFP on condition of anonymity a logistics employee.
Employees of the Mosellan site, dubbed "Smartville" and the historic cradle of the small car since 1998, learned last Friday of the intention of Daimler, owner of the Smart and Mercedes brands, to resell the factory due to a difficult financial situation. and a "reorientation of the capacities of (its) global production network".
The German manufacturer had however announced in the spring of 2019 the manufacture of a high-end electric model, in place of the Smart, which will be produced in China from 2022.
An investment of 500 million euros had been announced to transform the site. Work is still in progress and the first vehicles should have left the assembly lines in September.
Around 10:30 a.m., the site employees walked out to converge on the communication center, one kilometer from the production site.
Many of them, serious faces and masks on their mouths, wear a black T-shirt with the inscription "Smart 2020" on the back.
"We celebrated 20 years of Smart in 2018, Smartville is our life," says a 40-year-old brunette woman, working on the Moselle site since 1997.
"With the Mercedes, we had the peace of mind to go to retirement. We are afraid," she slips.
"There are everyone, the workshops, the offices, the managers. It's rare. We are all united to save Smartville," said a 32-year-old assembly worker.
The British group Ineos announced Tuesday that it is in negotiations with Daimler to buy the Hambach site to produce its future 4X4 Grenadier.
"It is still too early to know the conditions for taking over the potential buyer and if everyone will have a job," said an employee in his fifties.
The CSE, which started at 11:00 am, brings together "around twenty union representatives, two representatives from Smart France and two representatives from Mercedes, coming from Stuttgart", in Germany, it was said on the side of Smart.
© 2020 AFP