The requisition of refinery workers, decided on Tuesday to unblock the fuel depots of the Esso-ExxonMobil group, “is not necessary and is illegal”, accuses the CGT in a press release on Tuesday. The Montreuil power plant, denouncing the “choice of violence”, announces therefore suspending “all participation in meetings with the government and employers during the period”.
“As the ILO recalled in its condemnation of France (…), the requisition must only concern essential activities (medical, emergency, security vehicles, etc.) The organization and supply of these this is the responsibility of the government. To do this, France has equipped itself with so-called + strategic + gasoline stocks. Why doesn’t she use them? asks the confederation.
Martinez denounces a “blackmail”
In an opinion issued in 2011, following the requisition of employees in October 2010, the ILO had asked the government, “in the face of a situation of paralysis of a non-essential service but which would justify the imposition of a minimum service of functioning (…) not to have recourse to the imposition of the measure unilaterally”.
“Mr. Macron (…) should be inspired by the decisions of the ILO”, argued the secretary general of the CGT, Philippe Martinez, in an interview with the Parisian Tuesday evening. Martinez accuses the management of TotalEnergies and Esso-ExxonMobil – whose employees have been on strike for several weeks to demand wage increases – of “refuses (r) to talk about a general increase in wages”. He also denounces the “blackmail” of TotalEnergies, which is asking for the end of the strikes to start negotiations.
“Hit the table with your fist”
For Philippe Martinez, who says he called Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Friday and Energy Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher on Monday, the government must “bang his fist on the table” to push these companies to negotiate. “What I am proposing, I repeat, is a wage negotiation at the level of the petro-chemical branch because there is a grid problem. But the employers refuse, ”he adds.
The Solidaires union also denounced in a press release the government’s choice to “break the strikes” rather than “force employers to increase wages”. The CGT and Solidaires are calling on their activists to support refinery employees by going to the picket lines and demonstrating throughout the country. “Support for mobilizations for wages and not for requisitions”, for its part proclaimed the Force Ouvrière union in a press release.