A social movement has affected the French energy company since the end of September and runs the risk of major electricity shortages this winter.
Soon the end of the strike in the nuclear power plants? A wage agreement was reached on Friday between the management of EDF and the unions against the backdrop of strikes in the nuclear fleet. Added to the increases decided at the level of the electricity and gas industries branch, the company agreement will lead to a 9.47% increase in the group’s payroll, against + 4.3% in 2022, it said. -we learned from union sources. “They had to drop everything, comments a source familiar with the matter. The politician gave the order to the management to quickly unblock the situation. »
At this announcement, the employees of the Gravelines nuclear power plant (North), the most powerful in Western Europe, voted on Friday to suspend their strike movement until Monday, believing that management had responded to the demands , said Franck Redondo, FO secretary of the CSE of the plant. “This agreement tends to respond strongly to the demands which were those of the CGT” by approaching an increase for all of 120 euros gross per month, underlined for his part Julien Lambert, federal secretary of the FNME-CGT.
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The agreement, which comes on the second day of national wage negotiations, must still be ratified by the trade unions and be submitted for consultation with the staff of each site. In Gravelines, a new vote must decide Monday on the end of the strike if the compromise is well ratified by then.
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“If the agreement is confirmed on Monday, for us, the file is closed, everyone gets back to work and we wet our shirts to connect the power stations to the network for the French, in complete safety”, indicated Franck Redondo. The strike movement has gradually spread in recent weeks, reaching 19 reactors on Thursday (and 18 on Friday). The action of the CGT consisted of blocking maintenance and repair work on units that were shut down. On Tuesday, the RTE network manager had warned that “an extension of the social movement would have serious consequences on the heart of winter”.
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