Because the employees worked to “industrial recovery” of EDF, the electrician’s inter-union demands, for 2024, salary increases “up to the work done” these last months. In a press release published Thursday January 18, its four representative unions (CFE-CGC, CGT, CFDT, FO) called for a day of strike, Tuesday January 30.
A way of “remind management that, without employees at work, there is no production of wealth”. The idea will then not be to deprive French homes of power, but rather to hit the finances of the public group, for example by shutting down nuclear sites. In recent days, employees have already blocked the restart of two units, one at the Cruas-Meysse power plant (Ardèche) and the other at the Bugey plant (Ain).
This new social conflict also reminds us that, in this sector as elsewhere, inflation is still part of the landscape. For several years now, the consumer price index has been increasing more than the basic national salary in the electricity and gas industries branch, a sort of index point on which the remuneration of some 64,000 EDF SA employees depends in the country. Hence a “historical regression of their purchasing power”is mentioned in the press release, especially since 2021.
For 2024, across the entire sector, the general increase will be 2% for the basic national salary. To this, the company’s management plans to add an increase of 0.64% linked to seniority, and 1.5% on an individual basis, on a case-by-case basis. This is too little, according to the inter-union, which refused, on January 8, to sign an agreement in these terms.
“Individual measures more or less strong”
The press release of January 18 refrains from specifying the percentage desired by the employee organizations. Contacted, the CFE-CGC indicates that it has started compulsory annual negotiations with a target of 4% individual increases, in December 2023. In addition to that already obtained at the branch level, the CGT is pushing for an additional collective increase, in order of 4.6%. As well as for individual increases of 2.3%.
In order to justify its position, EDF management says it expects inflation to decline. According to projections made by the Banque de France, the increase in consumer prices will be around 2.5% for 2024 – compared to 5.2% on average in 2022, and 4.9% in 2023.
On the inter-union side, given the benefits expected for 2023, the organizations want to both cover the expected inflation and catch up with a small part of that of previous years. Cumulatively, the price index has jumped more than 23% since 2010, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies.
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