A “scandalous situation”. This is how the general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, described the state of the negotiations between the employees and the management of Clestra. A strike has been affecting the “world leader in office partitions” for eight weeks, whose headquarters are located in Illkirch-Graffenstaden, near Strasbourg.
“I came to support them,” said Sophie Binet in front of the company where several dozen employees were present and most of whom had worn a CGT chasuble. According to the union (the majority), 120 employees of Clestra Metal (which has become Unterland Metal since the takeover by Jestia last October) out of 140 have been on strike since July 3.
Sophie Binet castigated the buyer, Jestia, whom she fears will seek “to dismantle this flagship” of French industry. The management, which according to the CGT does not give any information on its industrial project, “multiplies the provocations”, she denounced, evoking the dismissal of an employee on the grounds that he would have taken out his telephone at work, or even “negative payslips”, some workers having had “2,000 euros in salary deduction” in July.
“The management does not give us any information”
We must “force the shareholder to be transparent”, insisted the trade unionist, calling on “the public authorities as a whole” to step up. She recalled that Jestia had benefited during the takeover of Clestra “from 5 million euros in public aid in exchange for commitments”, in particular the maintenance of employment. The State “has made available […] 4 million euros” and the Grand-Est Region “loaned 900,000 euros”.
According to Amar Ladraa, regional manager of the CGT metallurgy and member of the CSE of Clestra, the management began in June to move machines from Illkirch to a new site at the autonomous port of Strasbourg, “five times smaller” than the current one. . “Half of the employees do not know if they will be concerned and the management gives us no information on the content of the industrial project”, he lamented. The strikers did not receive a salary in July and August and a fundraiser was opened online.
Asked, the management did not wish to communicate. Questioned by BFM Alsace, she however assured that she was “listening to the employees” and wished that the activity “can resume its normal course”.