At the Feyzin refinery, CGT strikers cautious about dialogue with TotalEnergies
The CGT employees on strike at the TotalEnergies refinery in Feyzin (Rhône) welcomed, on Wednesday, management’s decision to receive the trade union organization at a meeting which it had initially made conditional on the return to work by the strikers. . However, this meeting did not convince the CGT to put an end to its movement.
“We’ll see what management puts on the table, but it’s a first step,” welcomed Antoine Lopez, 50, operator and CGT delegate during a “solidarity barbecue” organized by his union at one of the entrances to this refinery which employs six hundred people. “But I don’t understand why she receives the unions individually. Collectively, we can better negotiate, come to an agreement”regrets this activist.
In the smoke of the merguez sausages, some eighty people – including CGT activists from other companies – gathered at the end of the morning, at the exit of the shipping roundabout, from where the trucks leave empty.
Hervé Brocard, 47, shipping operator, strongly denies the figures released by management on Sunday on the average salary of a refinery operator, which would be 5,000 euros monthly, including profit-sharing and participation.
“At this salary, I stop the strike and I load the trucks with buckets! », he quips. The salary scale “ranges from 2,000 for a beginner to 3,500 at the end of his career, for a three-shift operator”says the trade unionist. “We work offbeat, every other weekend, in contact with carcinogenic products”remind the employees.
They also insist on the necessary investments for safety: “Today, when you take your shift, you hope to go home whole… We ask for equipment, it takes an accident to make things happen. This is not worthy of a company that makes billions in profits! », plague Mr. Brocard. There have been “thirteen incidents in one year” in Feyzin, assures Mr. Lopez.