Montauban (AFP)
The employees of the 20 Biofusion laboratories (Inovie Group) in Lot, Tarn-et-Garonne and Haute-Garonne, on strike since Tuesday, renewed their movement on Friday for next week, they demand a salary increase while the demand for tests Covid is exploding.
At the rate of two meetings a day, negotiations between strikers and management are continuing but hardly progressing.
Friday at midday, gathered in a general meeting in front of the company's headquarters, the employees decided by a large majority and by show of hands to renew the strike on Monday if no satisfactory agreement is found in the weekend.
Management has increased the Covid bonus to one thousand euros and is offering a 1% salary increase.
The management of Biofusion admits in a press release that the employees are "mistreated by the extra work" and proposes a timetable for negotiations, provided that the strike ceases and allows "the rapid reopening of all laboratories".
For Christophe Couderc, departmental secretary of the CGT, "there is no significant honest progress on which we could negotiate. After four days of strike, the proposals are unacceptable".
The trade unionist says the company has made more than 4 million in net profits per year and believes that the company must make an additional gesture given the "efforts made during the Covid containment period and the risks they took" .
"We are offered a 1% increase in wages and employees ask for 10%, which is not excessive. Employees are very determined and motivated, they need this salary increase to live with dignity," according to departmental secretary of the CGT.
This is one of the first strike movements in medical biology laboratories since the proliferation of virological tests (PCR) in France, the number of which now exceeds one million per week.
This objective, set by the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, is synonymous with overload of work for laboratories, whose staff tire.
At the beginning of September, François Blanchecotte, president of the Syndicat des biologistes (SDB), had warned of a risk of "social explosion, if the staff of private laboratories decided to go on strike", recalling that they had obtained nothing at the time. of the Ségur de la santé agreements.
© 2020 AFP