Paris (AFP)

The management of Bridgestone and the employees of the Béthune plant have signed an "method agreement" to discuss for five months "alternative scenarios to the closure", announced Wednesday by the Japanese tire giant, the minister said on Sunday. Delegate to Industry.

Management and staff representatives "signed a method agreement on Friday which gives five months to the discussion and which reopens alternative scenarios to the closure of the plant" located in Pas-de-Calais, assured Agnès Pannier-Runacher at "Grand Jury RTL-Le Figaro-LCI".

"The management is in the process of organizing itself into a negotiation process," she said, saying that "five months makes things possible".

"Social dialogue is essential, it must be based on trust", she added.

The minister, however, criticized the method adopted so far by the management of the Japanese giant.

"What is unacceptable (...) is not to have opened the discussion upstream of this brutal announcement", she judged.

"We knew that the factory was in decline" and the authorities had invited "the management of Bridgestone to the table of discussions precisely to look at how we could regain productivity, competitiveness".

It has also ruled out that the State returns to the capital of the company, a "false solution" which "solves nothing".

"The heart of the matter is to have an industrial project that holds up", according to her.

Agnès Pannier-Runacher and Labor Minister Elisabeth Borne will go to Bethune on Monday morning "to see everyone, everyone: local elected officials, local management" and "talk to European management", recalled the minister.

"There is an absolute mobilization for this site", according to government spokesman Gabriel Attal, who "believes in political pressure" and underlines "a form of political harmony around this issue".

Japanese manufacturer Bridgestone announced on Wednesday its intention to close its Béthune plant in 2021, which employs 863 people in the manufacture of car tires.

An announcement which the government and the president of Hauts-de-France Xavier Bertrand denounced "the brutality, the relevance and the foundations".

The Béthune plant, which produces automotive tires under the Bridgestone and Firestone brands, has been experiencing difficulties for a long time.

It is "the least efficient" among the ten factories of the group in Europe, says management.

© 2020 AFP