The French government has carried out its threat: in the face of 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.
The few strikers essential to unblocking the fuel from the tanks should therefore be forced to come to work, under penalty of criminal sanctions.
Despite this threat brandished for the first time 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 Éric Sellini, CGT coordinator for the group.
At the heart of the demands: wage increases, while inflation is raging and oil groups 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 “
For 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 reproduced: closed service 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 to “struggle” to fill up in Paris, like all those whose vehicle is a work tool.
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.
Start of dialogue? The French giant announced on Wednesday that it would individually receive the representative unions of the oil group, including the CGT, while 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, specified the CGT.
In the event of a requisition, “we will go to court to have them canceled”, warned Éric Sellini, while the CGT of Esso-ExxonMobil denounced “a questioning of the right to strike”.
Government spokesman Olivier Véran repeated for his part 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.