Hundreds of employees and the CGT union challenge the government over the "destruction" of jobs in industry

Several hundred employees from chemical, automobile and mass retail companies gathered on Wednesday 22 January at the call of the CGT in front of the Ministry of the Economy in Paris, to challenge the government on the "destruction" of industrial jobs.

From all over France, buses chartered by the union center transported employees of the chemist Arkema, which announced the day before the elimination of 154 jobs in Isère, and of its supplier Vencorex, where several hundred employees are also threatened. Alongside them, employees of Auchan, where nearly 2.400 jobs are threatened, and of Michelin, which plans to close two factories, in Vannes and Cholet, where 1.254 people work.

Dozens of flags, a banner reading "Stop industrial destruction, social destruction, union repression": the forecourt of the Bercy concert hall, next to the ministry, was decked out in red.

"Arkema is taking advantage of Vencorex's situation to cut jobs," says Emmanuel Grandjean, CGT coordinator for Arkema, of which Vencorex is a strategic salt supplier.

He mentions an "industrial sovereignty issue" for France, with the Arkema factory in Jarrie (Isère) supplying RTE with technical fluids for its transformers, or Arianespace with fuel for its rockets.

"We are 40 days away from a decisive decision for the future of chemistry" in France, Christophe Ferrari, president (DVG) of the Grenoble metropolitan area and mayor of Pont-de-Claix, where the Vencorex factory is located, told AFP.

The Lyon commercial court is due to rule in early March on a takeover project by a Chinese competitor, which provides for the retention of around fifty of its 460 employees.

"If you close the platform, you close it permanently," explains the elected official, asking the government for a "temporary nationalization" of Vencorex, as it did in 2018 for the Saint-Nazaire shipyards.

Mr Ferrari, like the CGT, estimates the cost of such nationalisation at 200 million euros over ten years, compared to several billion euros for decontamination and dismantling of the site.

"The anger is great, we are being thrown out like dirt, I have been at Auchan for 25 years," fumes Jean-Paul Barbier, a CGT union representative and employee of the distribution group in La Seyne-sur-mer, near Toulon (Var).

He is asking the government to "hold the company to account" for its use of public aid, which has "served more to enrich shareholders" than to create jobs.

The CGT estimates that there are "more than 300" layoff plans underway in France, "threatening some 200.000 jobs" with loss.