Dhe long queues of vehicles near service stations, hundreds of thousands of French people prevented from going to work, pupils deprived of school buses, self-employed workers and craftsmen immobilized for lack of fuel: in less than two weeks, simple wage demands within two private groups, TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil, degenerated into a national labor dispute, blocking part of the country’s activity.
While France was psychologically preparing to run out of electricity and gas this winter, the first shortages finally concerned gasoline and diesel. The war in Ukraine or the failures of our energy supply system have nothing to do with it. It was a dialogue of the deaf between an opportunist trade union not inclined to compromise, the CGT, and company management that was overly sure of themselves and incapable of anticipating the risks of a social confrontation, which made possible this Franco-French maelstrom.
Trapped
Like every year, the promise of a socially turbulent autumn was making its way. But no one imagined that the spark could come from TotalEnergies, a company whose profits are artificially inflated by the spectacular rise in oil prices and whose employees are not the worst paid. But social relations depend both on the overall context and on the state of the balance of power within the company. For lack of having properly evaluated both, TotalEnergies finds itself trapped, dragging with it its main competitor, the government and the French in a conflict that was avoidable.
The context, first, is that of inflation which is fueling growing concern among employees about their purchasing power. It is also that of a company that makes huge profits, taking more from the windfall effect than the talent of its management. This emblematic size of the company in the debate on the superprofits should have encouraged more anticipation, in a highly inflammable context.
The question of the balance of power, then, is due to the fact that the sector is among the most unionized, with a national federation of chemical industries CGT very assertive, a few months before a confederal congress which promises to be tense. Refining is also an activity where all it takes is a handful of employees to block the energy supply of an entire country. All this TotalEnergies did not discover ten days ago, when the strike was called.
Instead of anticipating the mandatory annual wage negotiations for 2023, in order to defuse tensions, like what other large companies have done, TotalEnergies preferred to play for time. Even if employees benefit from more advantageous remuneration than elsewhere, it was unimaginable that they would be satisfied with the 3.2% granted at the start of 2022, when inflation reached 5.6% in September.
This lack of anticipation means that, from now on, everyone is a loser. The company, which now has a knife to its throat to let go of what the CGT is demanding; the French, who did not need this sequence, when their morale was already at half mast; the government, which is forced to raise its voice by ordering the requisition of employees to try to unblock the situation, at the risk of adding tension to the tension. As for the CGT, it gives the image of a union with little concern for the general interest.