The Banque de France strikers voted overnight from Monday to Tuesday in favor of the memorandum of understanding proposed by management and to end the social conflict blocking the construction of a new banknote printing plant in Puy-de-Dôme.
“We are going to sign the memorandum of understanding and validate the end of the conflict,” CGT Banque de France union representative Hugo Coldeboeuf told AFP on Tuesday, presenting his union as the first of the central bank.
“There is no longer any obstacle, reason or pretext to block the project” on the management side, added the trade unionist.
Acted last summer, the construction of the new printing works in Vic-le-Comte (Puy-de-Dôme) had found itself in the hot seat because of a strike movement launched on December 2 at the current factory. de Chamalières, in the same department, some 30 kilometers from the new site.
A movement launched “despite the intimidation, contempt and provocations of the local hierarchy and the director general”, underlined a press release from the CGT dated Tuesday.
The claims related to the “competitiveness plan” proposed by the management, which plans to reduce from 4 to 3 the number of agents around certain machines on the new site, next to the stationery of the Banque de France.
This reduction in staff will be done well in the next printing works but with the “guarantee”, given by an ergonomics expert, “that it does not deteriorate the working conditions and the health” of the printers, specified Mr. Coldeoeuf.
An exceptional bonus of 500 euros will also be paid to printers, strikers and non-strikers, he continued.
“We are pleased that the management’s proposals, drawn up with all the trade unions, have ended today by obtaining the agreement of all of them”, reacted the Banque de France, requested by AFP.
This “represents a favorable element in the implementation of the essential competitiveness plan to accompany the investment of Refondation”, the name of the new printing project, continues the bank.
The ball is now in the court of the General Council of the Banque de France (equivalent to the board of directors, editor’s note), whose next meeting is scheduled for Friday.
The successive delays in this project for a new printing plant capable of taking over from the current plant in 2026 – a project that has been under construction for ten years – have caused the bill to rise to more than 250 million euros, against around 200 million euros in the estimate at the end of 2016.
About forty employees gathered in Paris on June 28 to denounce the “blackmail” of the institution, with the support of LFI deputy Eric Coquerel, also chairman of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, or Laurent Brun, number two of the CGT and secretary general of the federation of railway workers.