Lille (AFP)

Polish competition within the same group, maelstrom of political reactions and promises of "reindustrialisation": the announcement of the closure of the Bridgestone tire plant in Béthune (Pas-de-Calais) is reminiscent of that of the Whirlpool dryer in Amiens in 2017.

“It's exactly the same story!”: For ex-Whirlpool lawyer Fyodor Rilov, the two groups, Japanese and American, “have decided not to invest any more to prepare for the closure, and that has nothing to do with with their economic situation ".

Some 290 jobs were threatened at Whirlpool in Amiens and the struggle of these employees had given rise in particular to a theatrical pass of arms on the spot between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, in the middle of the two-rounds.

In January 2017, Whirlpool announced the end of the production of tumble dryers in Amiens for the benefit of Lodz (Poland).

Declared objective: to benefit from "stronger economies of scale" and thus "to safeguard competitiveness".

Employees feared this announcement after the takeover of Italian appliance manufacturer Indesit in 2014, which generated duplicates.

The Amiens site had already been the subject of several social plans.

In June 2017, the takeover offer from a Picardy entrepreneur teeming with projects received the approval of the works council and the support of the regional president Xavier Bertrand.

The State paid 2.5 million euros but the recovery quickly turned into a fiasco.

A year later, the company is placed in receivership.

Only 44 employees were finally taken over by the industrial joinery Ageco Agencement.

"The method agreements, the reclassification firms, the millions spent ... it is always the same operation to end up at the end, like us, with very few permanent contracts and a completely crappy buyer", points out Frédéric Chanterelle, CFDT delegate at Whirlpool.

"The reclassification will end in November and out of 290 employees, less than 60 have found a permanent contract, it is very, very little".

At Bridgestone, the unions denounce the drying up of investments in recent years, which benefit other sites of the group such as the one in Poznan (Poland).

"We start by transferring production and it is only from the moment when the transfer has already taken place in a sufficiently significant way (...) that the announcement of the closure is made", analyzes Me Rilov.

In these multinationals, "a decision to invest in a site is never taken at the local level or even at the level of a country, but, at the very least, at the level of a continent". he.

"We were told + we are closing the site because what you produce is no longer what the consumer is looking for," reports Pascal Lefebvre, CFTC delegate for Whirlpool Amiens.

"But the workers make what they are asked to make."

“What I wouldn't want is to see (with Bridgestone) the same as with Whirlpool,” Marine Le Pen warned on Monday, a few days after meeting with Bridgestone employees.

"Those who are traveling this afternoon (to Béthune), I saw them at Whirlpool (...) come to talk to us about reindustrialisation, revitalization, reclassification, training, blah blah blah, that was bullshit! "

for his part, the LFI deputy for the Somme, François Ruffin, got upset, calling on the government to "take the tire market out of free trade agreements".

© 2020 AFP