by Gilles Guillaume
PARIS, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Stellantis and three out of five unions reached an agreement on Wednesday to encourage the transfer of employees from the thermal engine site in Douvrin (Pas-de-Calais) to a new electric battery factory, one of the first illustrations of the profound change at work in the sector.
The CFTC, Force Ouvrière and the CFE-CGC, respectively 2nd, 3rd and 4th trade unions on the site, in the majority between them, have signed the Collective Conventional Rupture (RCC) project intended to support the transformation of the factory founded in 1969, the automaker born out of the merger between PSA and FCA told Reuters.
The other two unions – the CGT, the site’s first organization, and the CFDT, 5th – did not, however, initial the agreement covering the years 2022 to 2024 because in their eyes, the commitments on 400 reclassifications within the gigafactory of batteries being built just around the corner from the engine plant remain insufficient, two other sources added.
“It was necessary to create bridges between the two sites because the energy transition and mass electrification, whether we like it or not, will be imposed on us,” CFTC representative Frédéric Lemayitch told Reuters.
Stellantis did not succeed this time in rallying as many unions as in its previous agreements, but the group hailed a “good example of responsible social dialogue to support employees in a context of transformation”.
The future of the Douvrin plant, created more than fifty years ago to take over from the mining industry, has been in abeyance since the ban on sales of new thermal engine vehicles in Europe looms. horizon 2035.
The site produced 570,000 gasoline and diesel engines last year with a workforce of around a thousand people. In anticipation of the switch from thermal to electric, it will lose from May 2023 the production of diesel engines, concentrated in Trémery (Moselle), then at the end of 2024 that of 4-cylinder petrol engines, relocated to Hungary.
The northern plant will, however, continue to manufacture small 3-cylinder petrol engines during the changeover, a spokesman for Stellantis told Reuters.
Opposite, the ACC project, a joint venture between Stellantis, TotalEnergies and Mercedes-Benz, provides for a capacity of 24 GWh of batteries by 2028-2030 to equip electric cars, and the creation of 1,400 to 2,000 direct jobs by 2030.
400 RECLASSIFICATIONS BY EARLY 2025
The objective of the draft agreement is to encourage reclassifications from one site to another on a voluntary basis in different ways. The management thus promises direct hiring without a trial period, training, salary maintenance and a system of compensation for seniority lost when leaving Stellantis.
“We would have liked a commitment on the possibility of transferring all the staff, and not just 400 people. From experience, if it is not written, it does not count”, indicated Joël Petit, representative of the CFDT.
Fabrice Jamart, of the CGT, even fears that less than 400 people from Douvrin could benefit from the agreement if employees from other sites apply to ACC. “We risk having several hundred families hit by unemployment,” he said.
Stellantis ensures for its part that the battery manufacturer is able to eventually offer employment to all Douvrin employees who wish.
Older employees will be able to apply for senior leave agreed at group level in France.
The north of the country is set to become a major battery hub since Verkor will set up a gigafactory in Dunkirk, whose production capacity should go from 16 GWh in 2025 to 50 GWh in 2030, and Envision AESC, the Japanese subsidiary of the Chinese group Envision , will set up a 9 GWh gigafactory in Douai in 2024 and 24 GWh by 2030.
These two projects should enable the creation of nearly 4,500 direct jobs by 2030.
The Automotive Industry Platform (PFA), however, fears that these new outlets will not be enough to fully compensate for the 100,000 jobs at risk in the automotive industry by 2030, especially among subcontractors.
While batteries, power electronics and software are promising sources of growth, the fact that the number of parts needed to manufacture an electric motor is divided by at least four compared to a combustion engine is a structural factor in the decline. workforce.
Over the next few years, Europe will experience a surge of battery gigafactory projects to respond to the acceleration of vehicle electrification and reduce the continent’s dependence on Asia. Volkswagen alone plans to build six plants of 40GWh each. (Gilles Guillaume report, edited by Blandine Hénault and Jean-Michel Bélot)