Job losses will continue in French industry, warns the sector's minister

"There will probably be announcements of site closures in the coming weeks and months," Mr. Ferracci told France Inter on Saturday. The social toll "will be counted in thousands of jobs," according to the minister, who advocates a European response, particularly to support the automobile sector.

He spent three hours on Friday in Cholet (Maine-et-Loire) on the site of one of the two Michelin factories slated for closure, greeted by ten minutes of boos.

"The employees are upset, angry, we can understand that because the way the announcement was made (...) was not a dignified way," said Mr. Ferracci during the program "On n'arrête pas l'Eco": "The employees were notified very late, Michelin management did not come to make the announcement to them live, face to face (...) it is regrettable."

The French tire giant announced on November 5 the closure before 2026 of the Cholet and Vannes (Morbihan) sites, which have a total of 1.254 employees.

"We are at the beginning of a violent industrial bloodletting," warned CGT general secretary Sophie Binet, in an interview with La Tribune Dimanche.

This "bleeding" will hit "all sectors", and is "due each time to the same strategy of these companies". Namely "always increasing margins", on the one hand, and "always distributing more profits to shareholders", on the other hand, judged the head of the trade union.

“Fully integrated value chains”

Mr. Ferracci described as "very constructive" the contacts with local elected officials, the group's union organizations and management, with whom he intends to follow the action plan put in place. "Michelin's commitment is that no one is left without a solution," he recalled.

More broadly, for the struggling automobile industry, for which he announced an emergency plan, Mr Ferracci advocated an "approach to support the European automobile industry".

"The value chains are completely integrated. You have suppliers in Germany for manufacturers who are in France, and you have suppliers who are in France for manufacturers who are in Germany. Trade protection against Chinese vehicles must be designed at the European level," he said.

For his part, the Minister of Economy, Antoine Armand, reacted during his visit to the Made in France trade fair in Paris on Saturday morning. "We are in an extraordinarily demanding international situation with the cost of raw materials, the issue of energy, aggressive commercial practices coming from many countries and so we must not be at all naive, we must be extremely firm and extremely demanding with regard to the other continental plates that come to create instability and create fragility," he declared.

European automotive suppliers have sounded the alarm this week over the unprecedented number of job cuts in the sector.

32.000 job cuts in Europe have been announced for the first half of 2024, more than during the Covid pandemic, in this sector which employs 1,7 million people in Europe.

The automobile industry, losing competitiveness compared to Asia and the United States, is affected by the decline in sales on the continent, low-cost Chinese competition and the slow pace of electrification.

"European ecological bonus"

Among the measures mentioned, Mr. Ferracci envisages "an ecological bonus on a European scale", a "common European loan" to finance "support mechanisms" for the sector. "From the first half of 1, the European Commission said that it would prioritize a +clean industrial act+, that is to say a European legislation on clean industry, in which we will be able to put in place a certain number of measures."

The automobile industry is not the only sector affected.

In aeronautics, the defense and space branch of Airbus, which notably manufactures satellites and has 35.000 employees, should cut 2.500 jobs in 2026. Mr. Ferracci indicated that he would ensure that there would be no layoffs, as the employees would be redeployed in other Airbus entities.

The French chemical industry, which is particularly sensitive to energy and electricity costs, said in mid-October that it feared losing "15.000 jobs" out of 200.000 in three years, or 8%.

Already a thousand job cuts have taken place in recent months at Solvay, Syensqo, Weylchem ​​Lamotte, in addition to the 670 planned by the petrochemical group ExxonMobil in Port-Jérome in Normandy.

In the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, the bankruptcy of Vencorex, on the chemical platform of Pont-de-Claix (Isère), puts "nearly 5.000 jobs at stake" in other industrial sectors that the group supplies, estimates the CGT.

Here too, the drop is noticeable throughout Europe. German chemicals, the world's leading chemical company, is paying the consequences of the loss of cheap Russian gas. Unilever, Evonik, BASF have also announced staff reductions.

To address the competitiveness deficit, elected officials from all sides, led by the Vice-President of the National Assembly and former Minister of Industry Roland Lescure, have asked the government in a petition published by La Tribune Dimanche to maintain public aid to companies for the decarbonization of industry in the 2025 budget.

Panosyan-Bouvet: "Economic conditions are becoming significantly more difficult"

The Minister of Labor, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, stated on Sunday in the JDD that "economic conditions are becoming significantly harder", following the announcement of social plans at Michelin and Auchan.

It reports "an acceleration in the number of collective procedures opened by companies in difficulty. With, in addition, structural transformations in the automobile and mass distribution sectors".

According to the minister, the question of the cost of labour is therefore "fundamental".

"On the government's plan to review the reductions in contributions, I repeat, I am ready for a change in the text which is under discussion, in particular to mitigate its effects on the minimum wage," she says.

This key article of the national social security budget for 2025, providing for an overhaul of employer contributions, expected to bring in 4 billion euros, was removed in the Assembly by the Macronists, the right and the National Rally.

Regretting that the deputies had "prevented this debate from taking place", the minister reiterated her readiness to introduce "a review clause next year to measure the impacts of this measure".

On the issue of keeping seniors in employment, currently under negotiation by the social partners, Ms Panosyan says she wants them to have "full employment". "There are several avenues being explored, such as the idea of ​​a mid-career interview to make a 360-degree assessment of health, skills, job adjustments or prospects for retraining," she emphasizes.

On the subject of sick leave, raised by the Minister of Civil Service, Guillaume Kasbarian, Ms Panosyan declared that "in the private sector, work stoppages will cost Social Security 17 billion euros in 2024, compared to 8 billion ten years ago".

"This is why, after having taken initial measures in the Social Security financing bill, we will open this chapter in the first quarter of next year with the unions, employers and professional federations," she said.

She promises to "avoid nothing: prevention and health at work, local dialogue but also monitoring of absenteeism, abuse, etc."

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.