While the authorities feared “a contagion” of the strike movement which is currently affecting several refineries of TotalEnergies and Esso-ExxonMobil, the CGT, FO, Solidaires, the FSU and the youth organizations Fidl, Unef, MNL and the High School Life called to a day of interprofessional strike Tuesday, October 18, according to a press release read during a press conference at the headquarters of the CGT this Thursday.
The employees are called to demonstrate for “wages and the defense of the right to strike”, after the government’s decision to requisition employees of the oil industry to allow the distribution of fuel, according to this text.
“Whether in refineries, agri-food, nurseries, public transport (…) employees in a large number of professional sectors have been mobilizing for months in their companies or their services to demand and win legitimate salary increases, better working conditions, quality jobs,” the statement said.
Requisitions, the trigger
“Yet and while they are making huge profits, the companies in the Oil branch, in particular Total or Exxon, refuse to accede to the demands of the employees massively mobilized by the immediate opening of serious negotiations”, continues the text which also condemns the requisitioning of personnel in refineries, “an unacceptable attack on the right to strike”.
These requisitions were “the trigger” that convinced Force Ouvrière to join the intersyndicale, said the representative of FO, Patricia Drevon, during a press conference at the headquarters of the CGT in Montreuil. Unsa and CFE-CGC, which participated in the inter-union, did not wish to sign it, according to Catherine Perret of the CGT.
The CGT-RATP had called earlier in the day for a movement for wages and “the defense of the right to strike” the same day. The railway workers had also decided on a day of mobilization.