The 105 employees of the concession and the workshops of Vaux-en-Velin located between the racecourse and the Silk district learned from the management of the closure of their site in December. To justify this choice, the management of Renault put forward, on April 15 during a CSE, reasons of profitability but also the proximity of the site to “traffic and non-law areas which are clearly unfavorable to our activity. And to add: “The establishment is also surrounded by a population with low incomes per household, below the national average”, indicated Renault while presenting its report to the elected representatives of the Social and Economic Committee (CSE).
Statements that provoked the bronca, of the elected left opposition Ange Vidal. “I am stunned by such remarks, which I will not let pass because they are unacceptable, she explained in Le Progrès. How can a group like Renault, in which the State is a shareholder and which receives enough aid, afford to discriminate against the population of a city, to stigmatize it? The elected official challenged senators, as well as the region and the metropolis of Lyon, to denounce this attitude.
“Stigmatize the municipality and its inhabitants”
At the same time, in a joint letter by the prefect and the mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin, the Renault group was summoned to provide explanations. They are surprised “that no prior exchange has been established with the services of the State and the municipality. They especially deplore “the terms used in reference to the town and its inhabitants”. “We condemn the intellectual facility consisting in stigmatizing the municipality and its inhabitants to justify this decision”, they add.
Faced with this, the Renault group has already apologized, acknowledging “clumsy wording”. In addition, the management of the manufacturer, which maintains the closure of the site, assured that the 105 employees working on the concession and the workshops of Vaulx-en-Velin la Soie would not be dismissed but reclassified in the Lyon area. The group has three other sites around Lyon.