Almost a month of strike at Esso-ExxonMobil, and already three weeks at TotalEnergies, where two refineries (Gonfreville-L’Orcher, in Seine-Maritime, and Feyzin, in the Rhône) have again renewed the movement on the eve of school holidays . Despite its political and media impact, this movement has not succeeded in materializing the calls for convergence and a general strike formulated for months by unions and political figures. And this, although the demands around wage increases are commonly shared in this period of inflation.
Baptiste Giraud, lecturer in political science at the University of Aix-Marseille, explains it in particular by the difficulty of mobilizing the lowest salaries, the first concerned.
Are the three weeks of strike in the depots and refineries of TotalEnergies to be placed in the more general debate on wage increases, or in a particular context specific to this multinational?
Both of them. This movement comes in a sequence where, for a year, we have seen rising conflicts over wages, pushed by the context of inflation. Afterwards, it takes on particular importance at Total. First by the strong anchoring of the CGT in the refineries. Remember, however, that Total is more of a majority of office workers, which explains why the CFDT and the CFE-CGC can have a majority of two to sign an agreement.
Then by the very clear will that the direction had to play the rotting of the conflict, whereas the employees had made, since the summer, several days of strike more traditional to ask for the opening of negotiations. The management made it last, in the desire to put the strikers in difficulty and to find themselves in a more favorable position to negotiate.
When four unions, including the CGT, call to generalize the strike on Tuesday, October 18, is it the desire to capitalize on this conflict, after months of calling for the convergence of mobilization on the question of wages and the power to purchase ?
I do not interpret it like that: if they had wanted to capitalize, they would not have waited fifteen days of strike to call for mobilization. It is very long, they knew that the employees of Total could not hold out for long. This hasty decision to call an interprofessional strike was primarily intended to bring the strikers out of their isolation.
Then, the central management of the CGT would like to see the generalization of the strike, since convergence is necessarily a key issue when we ask for something as ambitious as the indexation of all wages. But it is in great difficulty to concretize it. Tuesday is a good example: 300,000 people in the street is low. If we look at the demonstrations of fifteen years ago, the unions claimed a million demonstrators on a day like that.
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