About fifty striking employees voted by a show of hands unanimously to continue the strike, at the foot of the Esso-ExxonMobil plant in Port-Jérome, in Seine-Maritime, on Wednesday morning, while the day before, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne brandished the threat to requisition the deposits of the oil group. Six of the seven refineries in France are therefore still on strike on Wednesday: the four from TotalEnergies and the two from Esso-ExxonMobil. Only that of Lavéra (Petroineos group) is not blocked.
“You are all targeted, the government wants to force us to come to work, we are going to fight against that, it is clearly a challenge to the right to strike. We are attacked head-on on our right to strike”, declared before the strikers Christophe Aubert, central CGT union representative of the Esso refinery in Port-Jérôme, recalling that the employees were going to “attack” their “23rd day of strike”.
On Tuesday, during the session of questions to the government in the National Assembly, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne announced the requisition of personnel to unblock the fuel depots of the Esso-ExxonMobil group where a salary agreement was concluded Monday by two trade unions. , majority at group level but not at its refineries.