The French government has carried out its threat: faced with strikers from oil groups determined to continue their strike for wages, it has launched a first requisition to unblock an Esso-ExxonMobil fuel depot in the northwest of the country. .
“Faced with the renewal of the strike by part of the personnel in Port-Jérôme, in Normandy, the government is launching the requisition of the personnel essential to the operation of the depot. The requisition will begin today,” the Ministry of Energy Transition told AFP.
Four ExxonMobil employees were requisitioned to allow the operation of the Normandy fuel depot in Port-Jérôme (north-west), two for Wednesday and two for Thursday morning, the ministry said.
Shortly after, the secretary general of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Philippe Martinez, who came to “support” ExxonMobil employees in Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon (north-west), announced the filing Thursday of an interim appeal against the requisitions of four of them.
“It’s a scandalous decision, we are on the side of the employees. I can announce to you that tomorrow we will go in summary to support all the employees who are requisitioned, ”said Mr. Martinez to the press.
The few strikers essential to the release of fuel from the tanks will thus be forced to come to work, under penalty of criminal sanctions, unless a court decision is favorable to the unions.
Despite this threat brandished the day before by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, the strikers decided early Wednesday to continue their movement, prolonging the fuel shortages which affect the whole of France.
In addition to fuel depots, six of the seven French refineries were on strike on Wednesday: the four from TotalEnergies and the two from Esso-ExxonMobil.
At TotalEnergies, the strike has been going on for two weeks and is gaining momentum. In all the moving sites, the strike was renewed on Wednesday with “almost 100% of strikers among the operators”, told AFP Eric Sellini, CGT coordinator for the group.
At the heart of the demands: wage increases, while inflation is raging and oil companies are making superprofits with the surge in price increases linked to the war in Ukraine.
The CGT union of TotalEnergies is thus demanding a 10% increase in wages for 2022, against the 3.5% obtained at the start of the year.
With the continuation of the movement, the strikers take the risk of a brutal epilogue with the requisition of some of them to restart the factories, like the memorable precedent of 2010 under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy.
For the depots, the restart would be immediate because quite simple, since it will suffice to open the valves for the trucks. But “if there is a requisition to restart production at the refinery, it will take at least two weeks,” explains Gil Vilard, of CGT Esso.
“Difficult situation”
Due to lack of supply, a third of French service stations lacked one or more fuels, and even nearly 45% in the north of the country.
Everywhere on the territory, the same scenes were repeated: closed gas stations, endless queues, rising prices and the morale of motorists at half mast.
“Gasoline is too important for us! You see, we’ve been struggling for more than a week”, testified Santiago, one of the countless couriers who have trouble filling up in Paris.
Faced with these queues of exasperated motorists, interviewed in a loop on the news channels, and under the fire of criticism from the opposition, the government drew the threat of requisition on Tuesday, for the moment only to unlock Esso-ExxonMobil depots.
A wage agreement was indeed concluded there on Monday by two trade unions, in the majority at the group level, but not by the CGT union at the origin of the strike.
Ms. Borne also mentioned the possibility of requisitions at TotalEnergies.
The French giant announced on Wednesday that it was going to receive the representative unions of the oil group, including the CGT, when it previously demanded the lifting of the blockages to receive this union.
Technically, it will not be a meeting of “negotiations” on wages but of consultation and exchange, said the CGT.
Government spokesman Olivier Véran repeated that the French would see a “very significant improvement in the coming days” in fuel reserves at service stations, thanks to the requisitions of strikers.
“Then, for a full return to normal to happen, it will take several days,” he added.