Submarines: Naval Group employees blame the blow after contract cancellation

Audio 01:22

The Naval Group site in Cherbourg in April 2021 (illustrative image).

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Text by: RFI Follow

3 min

Even if the impact on employment is not yet clearly defined and the figures vary according to the sources, the cancellation of the "contract of the century" of twelve submarines for Australia on which approximately 500 people worked is. a hard blow for Cherbourg.

How do Naval Group employees react?  

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With our special correspondent in Cherbourg,

Pauline Gleize

Australia will not pursue the "contract of the century"

for twelve submarines built by Naval Group.

The project was, according to a union source, a few months late and the contract was the subject of much controversy in Australia.

But the announcement took a lot of short notice.

"

Decisions that are beyond us 

"

When leaving the Cherbourg site of Naval Group, a huge hangar in the background, most of the employees flee microphones and cameras. Gilles stops all the same for a few minutes. He works on the Australian submarine program and blames it: " 

It's a bit like after a boxing match," he

says. 

It's going to take a little while to be able to catch your breath and bounce back.

"A bad moment which he did not expect:" 

Especially since we had good feedback on the file that we delivered the day before yesterday and which had been well received. When you work and put the work in the trash, it's always a disappointment. 

"

Badge around his neck, Dominique, a technician, is also a little stunned.

It's a hard blow for Cherbourg, so we'll see the consequences,"

he reacts.

 Afterwards, we now realize that we are an industrial company that is not like everyone else since, in fact, we have decisions that are taken and that are beyond us, therefore political decisions.

And we hope that behind, the consequences for the personnel will be well taken care of. 

"

Australian employees

Yvan assures us that Naval Group employees took the announcement in the face, but he remains positive.

“This

will not call into question the fact that Naval Group manufactures submarines that dive and come up safely, he

believes. 

We are not going to question our work. 

"

According to several sources, Naval Group's order book is far from empty.

The CGT hopes that all employees will be reclassified and that the recruitment campaign will not be canceled.

Even if it would now be frozen, according to another union source.

► To read also: Crisis of the Australian submarines: Paris does not take off

However, very little information is filtering out on the situation of the few dozen Australians who were working on the project in Cherbourg.

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