The automotive industry, hit by numerous job cuts in France, “is being wiped off the map”, the CGT union denounced on Thursday during a demonstration outside the Paris Motor Show. “The motor show is full of rhinestones and sequins, but in reality (…) it is an entire sector that is being wiped off the map,” CGT general secretary Sophie Binet told AFP.
He calls for the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into aid to the automotive industry in France and for an industry meeting. Several hundred employees from Stellantis, Renault, Valeo, Bosch and MA France came to the fair at the Porte de Versailles, under heavy police surveillance.
The number of jobs has already decreased in the sector over the last thirty years and companies in the sector are increasing the number of site relocations or job cuts. Linked to relocations, the slowdown of the automotive market and the transition to electric motors, they provoke anger among sector employees.
“No government will save us from closing factories”
“The auto capitalists are waging a deadly war,” said Jean-Pierre Mercier, Southern delegate at Stellantis’ Poissy (Yvelines) site. “No government will save us from factory closures,” he said, calling on employees to “break down the boundaries between manufacturers and equipment manufacturers” and to use their right to strike.
The head of Stellantis, Carlos Tavares, announced on Monday to the newspaper Les Échos that a decision will be made for Poissy, the last major car factory in Ile-de-France, in 2025. Its 2,568 employees produce the Opel Mokka and SUVs DS3 Crossback, but they have no visibility in the years to come.
“For us the decision has already been made”, regrets Jonathan Dos Santos, secretary of the CGT in Poissy. “No investment is needed anymore, not even to replace defective parts. They give priority to other factories.” “There is a climate of fear, the management tries to make us leave by offering us delivery jobs” in other companies, he added.
Even in Italy the situation is “dramatic” in the automotive sector and a national demonstration is planned for Friday, said Maurizio Oreggia, of the Italian union Fiom, together with American trade unionists who have come to support the French workers’ movement.
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