Two possibilities: lay down their arms and abandon a conflict that has been going on for many weeks at Esso-ExxonMobil as at TotalEnergies to demand wage increases or hold on and take the risk of a brutal epilogue.
Under fire from opposition critics, the government on Tuesday drew the threat of recourse to the ultimate weapon. Taunted by the opposition in the National Assembly, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced the requisition of personnel to unblock the fuel depots of the Esso-ExxonMobil group.
A wage agreement had been concluded the day before within this oil giant by two trade union organizations, majority at the level of the group but not in its refineries.
Ms. Borne also mentioned the possibility of requisitions at TotalEnergies.
Start of dialogue? this group invited the representative unions which “do not take part in the strike movement” to a meeting of “consultations and exchanges” on Wednesday afternoon.
“If the CGT lifts all site blockages before noon tomorrow, it will be welcome at this dialogue meeting,” said the French energy giant.
The government intends to put an end as soon as possible to scenes now familiar throughout the country or almost: closed service stations, endless queues, rising prices and the morale of motorists at half mast.
Thus Elisabeth Borne underlined before the national representation the scope of the agreement reached Monday at Esso-ExxonMobil: “Social dialogue is to move forward, once a majority has emerged. These are not agreements minima. Management’s announcements are significant”.
“From then on, I asked the prefects to initiate, as permitted by law, the procedure for requisitioning the personnel essential to the operation of the depots of this company” in Gravenchon (Seine-Maritime) and Fos-sur-mer (Bouches -du-Rhône), chained the Prime Minister.
– In the viewfinder –
The Ministry of Energy Transition said Tuesday evening that the staff requisition orders were “ready” for the Esso-ExxonMobil depots, but not yet taken. The ministry wants to believe in a “resumption of activity”, in particular at the depot of the Gravenchon refinery. “We hope that this recovery will continue and that we will not need to resort to requisition measures,” he added.
There were indeed a few fewer strikers on Tuesday afternoon, admitted a union source, refusing however to speak of a resumption of work.
The ministry said another requisition order was ready for the TotalEnergies fuel depot in Flandres, near Dunkirk. It “will be activated if the strike continues tomorrow despite the planned opening of negotiations”, he warned.
“We suspected it,” reacted Thierry Defresne, CGT secretary of the TotalEnergies Europe European committee, referring to the strategic nature of this very important deposit. According to him, the State would also meet less resistance on this site which has barely 120 employees than on a refinery like the one near Le Havre which employs 1,700, not counting the neighboring dockers.
Anyway, the CGT Confederation will call “in the event of requisition, all its bases, all its structures (…) to massively join all the pickets on the refineries”, he warned.
Another sign that a surrender is uncertain, the Donges refinery (Loire-Atlantique) has planned to return to the movement on Wednesday.
The CGT of TotalEnergies is demanding a 10% increase in wages for 2022, against the 3.5% obtained at the start of the year, the energy giant having made $ 10.6 billion in profit in the first half of 2022.
In the event of a requisition, “we will go to court to have them canceled”, also warned Eric Sellini, CGT coordinator for TotalEnergies, while the CGT of Esso-ExxonMobil denounced “a questioning of the right to strike”.
