Status: 10/14/2022 09:15 a.m
There is a first breakthrough in the week-long wage dispute at French refineries: Two of the four striking unions accepted the offer from the oil company TotalEnergies during the night.
After days of strikes at French refineries and petrol depots, the oil company TotalEnergies has reached a compromise with some of its employees. CFDT negotiator Geoffrey Caillon said that during the night both sides had agreed on a seven percent salary increase and bonuses of 3,000 to 6,000 euros. However, the CGT union left the negotiating table and continued the strikes.
CGT wants higher profit sharing
According to Caillon, the agreement between CFDT and TotalEnergies has not yet been signed. His union’s negotiators supported the deal, but members still need to agree to sign it before midday on Friday. Then the situation in France will hopefully “calm down”. The trade union CFE-CGC also wants to present the compromise to its members. Negotiator Dominique Convert said he was “rather in favour”. “It can’t go on like this,” he said, referring to the bitter wage dispute.
Together, the CFDT and CFE-CGC represent a good 56 percent of TotalEnergies’ unionized workforce, with the rest represented by the CGT and CAT. The company management had recently offered six percent more salary, the CFDT got another percentage point out. In view of the high inflation, however, the CGT demands a wage increase of ten percent. Even before the compromise between management and CFDT, the CGT left the negotiating table. With her demand, she wants to fight for a higher participation of the employees in the company’s profits. TotalEnergies had made a profit of 10.6 billion US dollars in the first half of 2022.
Government already imposed service obligations
In the past few days, the strikes have made numerous taxi drivers and commuters who depend on their cars despair because gas stations did not have enough fuel or even had to be closed. In the Paris region, prices at some gas stations climbed to just under three euros per liter.
Most recently, the government of President Emmanuel Macron felt compelled to intervene. She had service commitments for a TotalEnergies petrol depot near Dunkirk and an Esso-ExxonMobil petrol depot near Le Havre. Economics Minister Bruno Le Maire explicitly called on TotalEnergies to increase salaries and warned the unions to “accept the outstretched hand”.