Rodez (France) (AFP)

"Massive blow" in Aveyron: Bosch announced on Friday that it would cut 750 jobs in its Rodez plant by 2025, an earthquake in this employment area where the German automotive supplier was the leading private employer .

"We will reduce the teams in the years to come, by 2025, to 500 people", declared the president of Bosch for France and the Benelux, Heiko Carrie, judging the measure "essential" in the current context of fall sale of vehicles with diesel engines.

The 1,250 employees of the Bosch plant in Rodez manufacture injectors and spark plugs for diesel vehicles, the demand for which has declined considerably.

"The will is to avoid forced departures" through early retirement and voluntary departures, says the leader.

The workforce reduction will begin in 2021. At the end of the year, the number of employees will drop to 1,100, Heiko Carrie predicts.

This restructuring, assures the boss of Bosch France, "gives a real perspective for the site and a necessary stability for the years to come. (...) We are no longer in a logic of closing the site".

In a statement, Bosch management points out that "the share of diesel in Europe has fallen considerably over the past ten years. In France, registrations of new passenger cars equipped with a diesel engine have fallen by more than half, from 73% in 2012 to around only 34% today ”.

At its peak in the early 2000s, the factory had up to 2,400 employees.

Also, the prospect of 500 jobs by 2025 is difficult to pass.

- "Difficult to swallow" -

"We are angry. Indirectly, they announce the end of the site. To save the site in the medium term, it would take investments, but there is nothing", reacted Vanessa Negre, secretary CGT, majority union at Bosch in Rodez.

She is skeptical about the absence of layoffs.

"If there aren't 700 volunteers, there will be a PSE behind."

And she does not see employees volunteering if they do not have a professional alternative.

For the SOUTH delegate Cédric Belledent, "this announcement is a real blow, a knife in the back! We will do everything to avoid this tragedy. So many job cuts, we did not expect it and it is difficult to swallow".

"A factory with 500 employees, this is not acceptable: it also means that if in five or six years, the market still experiences difficulties, the ax will fall", says the trade unionist, referring to the guarantee on the maintenance of the 500 jobs that only run until 2027.

"Let us not forget that the decline in the diesel market is the result of policies which have never taken into account job losses", adds Cédric Belledent.

For the PS president of the Occitanie region Carole Delga, "the decision of the German group, present for nearly 60 years in Rodez, is a real blow".

She believes that "the actions taken by Bosch to relaunch and maintain the activity have not been up to par."

Present in the automotive, electronics and energy sectors, Bosch has nine factories in France where it employs around 6,000 people.

Worldwide, it has nearly 400,000 employees.

In December, Bosch announced the shutdown at the end of 2021 of a production line for electrically assisted steering columns, which employs 75 people at its site in Vendôme (Loir-et-Cher), which has 500 employees.

© 2021 AFP