“Staff are worried: this is the first time that a launcher has been stopped and the next one is not operational”, warns Jean-José Mathias, union representative of the Union of Guyanese Workers (UTG) at the Guiana Space Center (CSG), in Kourou. Indeed, while the teams are busy preparing for the last launch of Ariane-5, its successor, Ariane-6, is still in the qualification phase, the maiden flight being planned at the end of 2023 at best. , more than three years late.
Added to this is the cessation of flights of the Russian Soyuz rocket in Guyana following the war in Ukraine and the failure of the first commercial launch of the small Vega-C launcher, in December 2022, whose return to flight is scheduled for the end of 2023. This year, only four to five shots are scheduled in Kourou – it will hardly be more in 2024 –, while the base has the capacity to carry out at least a dozen per year.
This decline in activity is accompanied by the organization of the arrival of Ariane-6, “40% cheaper” than Ariane-5, recalls Marie-Anne Clair, director of the Guiana Space Center, to face competition from the American SpaceX. The duration of this campaign is nine days, compared to one month for Ariane-5, and the launch assembly requires less maintenance, according to Arianespace, a subsidiary of Ariane Group, responsible for flight preparation.
“That’s fewer people in Guyana”explains M.me Clair, the CSG employing 1,580 people. “We have planned a maximum of 190 job cuts: 40 seconded positions, therefore people who will return to mainland France, and 150 local contract positions which are part of the workforce reduction process”she continues.
“Welcoming new operators”
“The red line, for us, is layoffs”, warns Christophe Dupuy, union representative CFE-CGC of the CNES (National Center for Space Studies) at the CSG. “We must therefore provide mechanisms for the social acceptability of this transformation”, he pleads. After four months of negotiations, an inter-union bringing together the UTG, the CFE-CGC, FO and the CFDT is in the process of signing an agreement with the Union of Space Base Employers, which represents around forty companies.
Beyond the legal clauses, it obtained for the departing six months of salary in addition, to which is added a fund supplemented by the CNES, in particular for the creators of companies and for the retirees who commit at least one year. in activities contributing to the development of Guyana.
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