A tank truck leaves the TotalEnergies refinery in Mardyck on October 13, 2022 in the North (AFP / DENIS CHARLET)
For the moment, no breakthrough: the negotiations between unions and management on wages began on the night of Thursday to Friday at the headquarters of TotalEnergies, on the 17th day of a strike which succeeded in creating chaos in the gas stations. service and swelled into a call for a big day of national strike, from transport to civil servants, next Tuesday.
The tone was not optimistic, shortly before midnight, when a visibly angry CGT negotiator, Thierry Defresne, announced following a three and a half hour meeting that the management’s latest proposal, a 6.5% increase in wages once morest 6% initially proposed, was “very far from the mark, very far from proposals which would be likely to end the current conflict.”
“Tomorrow we will have an insurrectionary situation in the refineries if we are not able to conclude an agreement this evening,” he warned.
The three other unions representing the oil giant take part in the nightly negotiations, including the CFE-CGC and the CFDT; their representatives had warned that the night might be long.
In Hauts-de-France, Ile-de-France and Center-Val-de-Loire, particularly affected by the shortages created by strikes in refineries and fuel depots, motorists continued their quest on Thursday. gasoline and diesel engines, chasing tanker refueling and monitoring applications. A shortage that wastes considerable time for professionals who depend on their vehicle: road hauliers, craftsmen, paramedics…
Pumps out of service for lack of fuel in a service station, October 13, 2022 in Paris (AFP / Alain JOCARD)
“For four or five days, it’s been a disaster,” exclaims Françoise Ernst, a driving school instructor in Paris. “We can’t work anymore.”
Truckers are “on a knife edge”, Jean-Marc Rivera, secretary general of the professional organization Otre, told AFP.
“I have contracts where I have to take out the trash, where I have to perform cleaning services. And when you don’t have gas and you have a very big tour, it’s a bit complicated “, says Elisabeth Mailhes, self-employed in cleaning, who is not paid if she does not honor her contracts.
Only one refinery saw the strike stop on Thursday, that of Fos-sur-Mer belonging to Esso-ExxonMobil, a group where an agreement was reached with certain unions but not the CGT. The strikers of that of Gravenchon-Port-Jérôme, on the other hand, renewed it.
Five refineries, out of seven in France, remain shut down, as well as several depots, including a huge one near Dunkirk, belonging to TotalEnergies.
– General strike on Tuesday –
Striking employees and trade unionists at the TotalEnergies refinery site in Gonfreville-l’Orcher, near Le Havre, on October 13, 2022 in northwestern France (AFP / LOU BENOIST)
At 5:00 p.m. Thursday, 29.1% of stations lacked one or more fuels, according to the Ministry of Energy Transition, barely less than the day before (30.8%). In the Center Val-de-Loire, the proportion rises to 44.7%.
The opening of negotiations, the first since the start of the strike, comes as the social climate has become tense following government requisitions of employees at the Esso-ExxonMobil refinery in Gravenchon in Normandy, and at the TotalEnergies Flanders depot in Mardyck, near Dunkirk, to reopen the floodgates.
These requisitions have “set fire to the powder”, according to the boss of the CGT, Philippe Martinez, on BFMTV, and a major strike will take place in France next Tuesday, in multiple sectors and among civil servants: four major unions (CGT, FO, Solidaires, FSU) and several youth organizations called for a day of mobilization and interprofessional demonstrations.
The SNCF and the RATP will be particularly affected by the strike, which adds to an existing movement in nuclear power plants.
– “Disorders of public order” –
Refineries and main oil depots in mainland France ( AFP / )
In the field, the first employees requisitioned, forced to work under penalty of criminal sanctions, made it possible to release the first stocks of fuel by pipeline (7,000 cubic meters from the Gravenchon depot in Normandy in 24 hours, according to the government) and by the road (25 tankers from Dunkirk on Thursday), without incident.
The North prefecture argued that the requisitions had been decided because of “public order disturbances” in gas stations, where the length of the queues, up to two kilometers, led to friction, and prevents priority professions from accessing the pumps.
To speed up the recovery, the government has once more authorized tanker trucks to drive this weekend, while heavy goods vehicles are normally prohibited from driving from Saturday 10 p.m. to Sunday 10 p.m.