All EDF employees are called to strike all day this Tuesday. They want to encourage the management of the energy company to return to the negotiating table on the question of wages. The movement will above all have financial consequences for the company.
This day of strike will result in “load reductions (electricity production) and the cessation of construction sites on the units (nuclear reactors) which are under maintenance”, according to Arnaud Barlet, CFE-CGC central union secretary for EDF SA .
“Record” results in 2023
“The consequences are for the finances of the company, since if we produce less electricity, we sell less electricity, but that does not affect our customers,” he warns from the outset, excluding the possibility of cuts volunteers like those who had punctuated the mobilization against pension reform.
EDF management also recalls that “if RTE (manager of high voltage lines) notices that there may be an imbalance in terms of supply and demand, it can ask to increase the load of a reactor and employees are required to do so.”
For Thomas Plancot, CGT central union secretary, “the anger towards the management’s position on salary measures is very present”. The general and individual increases granted by EDF SA allow “an average increase of 4.14% in salaries for the year 2024”, said management, including individual measures of increases of +1.5%. On this last point, the CFE-CGC demands 4% and the CGT 2.3%.
A “context of high group debt”
Management recalled the “high debt context of the group”, whose finances are weighed down by a debt of 65 billion euros, while it must face a wall of investments, in particular to revive nuclear power. The unions, however, emphasize that the group’s management will announce “record” results for the year 2023.
The Cruas nuclear power plant (Ardèche), one of whose reactors, under maintenance, was due to restart this week, has been on strike since the end of December. Others could follow on Tuesday, such as that of Bugey (Ain), but these control or maintenance operations concern much fewer power plants than last year, marked by a winter of all fears on the energy level.