If the company does not reveal its amount, it will be a bank transfer for the 5,000 customers concerned.
GRDF, the operator of the gas network in France, plans to make a gesture in favor of customers who have been penalized by the recent social conflict which shook the company around wages, management said on Thursday. The movement, national in scale and which surprised the company by its radicalism, was very followed in Ile-de-France where the strikers blocked sites at the call of the CGT union.
It resulted in inconvenient gas commissioning delays for customers moving in in the middle of winter, or occasional cuts in Neuilly-sur-Seine, or even Perpignan. “We will no doubt have to make a gesture for some“, indicated the general manager of GRDF, Laurence Poirier-Dietz, before the association of economic and financial journalists (Ajef).
Read alsoGRDF and CGT sign an end-of-conflict agreement
She clarified that it was about “less than 5000 customers“, all located in Ile-de-France and who will have to manifest themselves to the company as soon as they have found themselves”in a complicated situation“. This gesture, of an unspecified amount, will take the form of a bank payment.
GRDF is the main gas distributor in France with 11 million customers. Asked about the cost of the movement, which ended on Tuesday, Laurence Poirier-Dietz specified that it was “in process of encryption“:”we have no penalties with customers (…) and we can have penalties with promoters and people to whom we had promised gas and a connection contract“.
“It’s not in the gas man’s DNA»
“We haven’t seen this for a long time“, she added. “We have faced a number of abuses, damage to sites, vehicles that have had flat tires (…) Attacks on the company, its equipment or its sites, this is not acceptable , as well as going to cut off the gas to customers, we talked about Neuilly but there were also (other cuts) here and there, in Perpignan, etc., I condemn it, it’s not not in the DNA of gascommented Laurence Poirier-Dietz.
GRDF management had signed a salary agreement in November with three unions (CFDT, CFE-Energie, FO) providing for a 2.3% increase, in addition to an increase in the basic national salary (SNB) obtained at the level of branch. The CGT, majority at GRDF, asked for an additional 2.3% as well as “more general increases and less individual increases“, according to Laurence Poirier-Dietz. An agreement was finally reached for the company’s 12,000 employees providing for an additional bonus in 2023 of at least 50 euros and up to 87 euros for the lowest salaries, bringing the revaluation for all to at least 200 euros gross.