Bruno Breton is proud of his black and orange truck. And it is with an expert hand that he feels the dough pieces that will be used to make the pizzas for his evening customers, Wednesday January 19, 2022. Only eight months ago, Bruno was on the Bridgestone company’s tire production line, from Bethune. It closed permanently on April 30, 2021.
Since September, he has embarked on a new professional adventure : a traveling pizza truck. “I don’t regret anything at all, I can’t see myself doing anything else and I hope to do it until I retire“, assures Bruno, without a moved thought for his 862 former colleagues, who like him had to resign themselves to leaving their jobs very quickly when the announcement of the closure fell in 2020.
But he had been maturing this project for several years and he was able to carry it out with the help of the financial and technical support provided for in the company’s social plan: “The factory really helped me to have confidence in myself, on the gestures, the practice, the repetitive gestures, the performance. It’s also important when you’re a pizza maker.“
At 45, 24 of whom spent at Bridgestone, he made the choice of retraining, convinced that “it doesn’t (him) certainly wouldn’t have liked to work in another factory“.
The “Bridgestone family” lives on
Moving on, it was the choice of Anthony Duquenoy, he is 42 years old. Twenty-five years as an electro-mechanic and today, we find him tidying up the shelves of a ready-to-wear store that he opened with his wife Sabrina also in September, in Bruay-la-Buissière . And he says to himself “very happy“, especially since business is good.
You can imagine, being posted for 25 years is another life! You get up in the morning at 5 o’clock, you hardly see your family. The closure of Bridgestone allowed me to look elsewhere and change direction
– Theo Boscher
Bridgestone alumni keep in touch frequently. They have a Facebook group in which they share job offers, give each other news, sometimes broadcast the obituaries of former colleagues. All speak of a “Bridgestone family” whose spirit lives on. In his pizzeria, Bruno hands out the business cards of former colleagues who have gone into real estate or the automobile industry.
Creperie, pizzeria, tobacco bar
“I was crushed, I even cried, recognizes Francky Cagniart, in the kitchen of his house in Verquigneul. But it was a very strong bond, we were friends.“He chose the pancake and will open a creperie next March. With the particularity that the employees will be young people with autism or Down’s syndrome to participate in their integration.
Francky had been thinking about it for several years, with his wife Marie, and he says it: “Now I’m totally into this project. I want to show companies that we can recruit young people like them and that they can work.“He still thinks of Bridgestone but he is looking to this new stage in his life, after 18 years of making tyres.
The reconversions are varied: a bar-tabac in Vendin-lès-Béthune, a chip shop in Bruay-la-Buissière and even a hotel in Ardèche. There was the desire to turn the page of the industry for real.
Still a hundred people without a solution
The three men are part of the thirty former employees who created their company after having had to leave Bridgestone. In all, nearly 430 employees have found a permanent work solution including 255 on permanent contracts, 63 on fixed-term contracts and 70 on early retirement. Figures announced by the Minister Delegate in charge of industry a little better than what the unions announced at the time of the closure.
Corn “a hundred people still find themselves without a solution, still looking for a job or without training“, said Agnès Pannier-Runacher, visiting Béthune this Wednesday. She also announced that “two new projects are under study to revitalize the old site of Bridgestone or nearby, in addition to that already planned for BlackstarThe latter, who wants to develop a tire recycling site, plans 200 jobs by 2025.
But the minister acknowledged that “employees need a solution right away“. A speed-dating with industrial employers is to be organized soon in the Béthune basin.