Le Bourget (France) (AFP)

“What will become of us at our age?” Asks this frail and dynamic order picker.

"We need to work, it's our job, it's our life."

Since October 7, the majority of the site's employees have been on strike.

Behind the red and white barriers, the warehouse is at a standstill: no pallet truck is busy in the corridors, and the few trucks still in the parking lot have been abandoned by their drivers.

"It is not the employees that must be fired, it is the profits that must be taxed," chanted about fifty strikers in front of the scene, greeted by the horns of motorists.

Several of them tell how, without having been prepared, they learned the news of the closure, greeted by a "silence", before cries or even discomfort.

It was last June.

Three months later, Hennes and Mauritz (H&M) reported year-over-year sales up 9% and sharply rising profits exceeding pre-pandemic levels for Covid 19.

Over the June-August period of its staggered financial year, the world number 2 in the sector recorded a net profit almost tripled by 4.69 billion crowns (approximately 459 million euros).

H&M, "we built it"

With 22 years of service, Christine Briard remembers the great era of the textile group in France, which arrived in 1998. "We opened 384 stores, it was campaign after campaign" of advertising, says this 57-year-old woman who unloaded then the decorations used to dress the windows.

"H&M did not build itself, we built it, we all built it", emphasizes Nacira.

Some 150 employees are now threatened with dismissal, in addition to disabled workers and temporary workers.

The negotiations underway within the framework of the employment safeguard plan (PSE) are "worthy of an SME", storms Gemina Mehiaoui, CGT delegate, who considers that the accompanying measures are minimal.

"The only goal of this company is to separate from its employees because they are aging. The average age is 50 years on the site. We were squeezed like lemons, and today they are old and for many broken, they are no longer used for anything ", she fumed, recalling that many are" women, single-parent families ".

"We what we want is work! We do not want to go and fill in the statistics of the employment center," she says.

Affected by the health crisis, H&M has decided to close 350 of its 5,000 stores around the world this year, and to open 100, in order to adapt to the "increasing digitization" of the fashion industry, where Internet sales continue to grow, the group said in April in a statement.

Affected by the health crisis, H&M has decided this year to close 350 of its 5,000 stores worldwide and to open 100 in order to adapt to the "increasing digitization" of the fashion industry, where sales by internet keep growing LOIC VENANCE AFP / Archives

Asked by AFP on the reasons for the shutdown of the Le Bourget site, H&M France did not respond.

"It's a form of betrayal, we are in a country that helps companies (during the crisis, editor's note), and today at the end of all that, of this aid, they directly announce a closure to us" , strangles Diop Bocara, 39, UNSA delegate and employee of the platform for 18 years.

"It's sad ..." blows Malika Mehiaoui, Gemina's sister.

"We are not just colleagues, we are a family, we have created links, celebrated marriages, births ... Beyond our jobs, it is a family that will fall apart and that is what is an added shock. "

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