They lay down in front of the company’s gate in order to hinder the passage of requisitioned employees. Friday, October 14, in the afternoon, near Dunkirk (North), a handful of refractory to the lifting of the strike tried to symbolically oppose the measures imposed the day before by the prefect to unblock this strategic reservoir of the group TotalEnergies, which supplies the Hauts-de-France region.
Despite a salary agreement signed between the management of the oil group and the majority unions (CFDT and CFE-CGC), the CGT, which has dissociated itself from it, continues to call for mobilization on the ground. Ultimately, the strikers renewed, Saturday, October 15, the movement – a few hours, even a few days – on all the sites of the major in France. Both in the refineries – that of La Mède (Bouches-du-Rhône), Feyzin (Rhône), Donges (Loire-Atlantique) and Normandy, the largest in France, located near Le Havre – and at the depot of fuel from Flanders, near Dunkirk.
At the same time, the use of requisitions is beginning to bear fruit. Witness the end of the strike, Friday afternoon, at the ExxonMobil refinery in Port-Jérôme-Gravenchon (Seine-Maritime). “The strike movement is up here as in Fos-sur-Mer [où il s’est arrêté jeudi], negotiations with management are blocked and requisitions are in place”conceded Christophe Aubert, CGT coordinator of the site, forced to this decision “lack of leverage to fight”. In these circumstances, a return “to a normal running situation” at the two Esso-ExxonMobil refineries will take “two to three weeks”according to the group.
A form of resignation that some would like to see spread at TotalEnergies as well. Especially since the major is following the same path as the French subsidiary of ExxonMobil. Like Esso, Monday, October 10, the management of TotalEnergies sealed, after a long night negotiation, Friday, an agreement with the majority unions (CFDT and CFE-CGC). The latter provides for a 7% increase in wages for 2023, retroactive to November 1, 2022. A response nevertheless deemed insufficient for the CGT, which relies on inflation to claim a 10% increase.
Growing exasperation at gas pumps
The Dunkirk depot is also the subject of requisitions by the prefecture of striking personnel. However, a blow for the CGT, the administrative court of Lille rejected, Friday evening, the request for interim relief filed by the union, which contested the legality of the said requisitions.
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