Faced with the fuel crisis, the leader of the Renaissance deputies is raising her voice. Aurore Bergé lamented on Sunday that the strike in several refineries penalizes first “the French who work”, calling to put “pressure” on both companies and unions to find an agreement.
“It’s not above all Total that is penalized, it’s the French who work, it’s the French (…) who get up earlier to try to make several service stations in the morning and simply to be able to have the right to work,” said Aurore Bergé on BFMTV.
“The pressure must be put on both sides.”
Denouncing a “preventive strike” led by the CGT while wage negotiations were to be conducted in mid-November, Aurore Bergé felt that “pressure must be put on both sides”. “Yes, we have a company (TotalEnergies, editor’s note) which has made exceptional profits. It is legitimate for employees to ask to benefit from these exceptional results which have also been achieved thanks to them,” she said.
“What is unacceptable is that these same employees, at the request and under the constraint of the CGT, once again carry out preventive strikes which have an impact on the French people who work”, she insisted. “We must bring both to reason,” said Bergé, who again refuted any “shortage” in the territory, even though many service stations are experiencing supply disruptions.
At the RN, we put pressure on Total
For his part Jordan Bardella, candidate for the presidency of the National Rally, estimated that “TotalÉnergies today has in its hands the possibility of unblocking the situation”. “A company that makes profits is normal, but here we are talking about super-profits which are undue, decorrelated from the strategy” of the company and “must therefore also benefit the increase in wages”, a- he added on France Inter / France televisions / Le Monde, considering that the demands of the employees “are perfectly legitimate”.
The current acting boss of the RN, however, warned that “the prolonged paralysis of the country could have cataclysmic consequences”. This is why “no solution should be ruled out” and “in the extreme case where we are unable to unblock the situation and TotalÉnergies assumes a blocking strategy, then I think that indeed, we should not exclude requisition,” he said.
“Getting out of strike culture” for LR
For the boss of senators LR Bruno Retailleau “it has only lasted too long” because “a union cannot take France hostage”. Accusing the government “of discarding”, he asked him “a requisition so that we can release the production force of our refineries”. “We have to get out of the culture of the strike, the strike culture,” said Retailleau, candidate for the presidency of his party, on RTL / Le Figaro / LCI.
The strike movement initiated ten days ago was renewed on Sunday at TotalEnergies and Esso-ExxonMobil, generating stock shortages of gasoline and diesel, particularly in Hauts-de-France and Ile-de- France.
The largest refinery of the TotalEnergies group, based in Normandy, that of Feyzin (Rhône), the “bio-refinery” of La Mède (Bouches-du-Rhône) and the Flandres fuel depot near Dunkirk (North) are at shutdown, as did two sites of the American Esso-ExxonMobil in Normandy and Fos-sur-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône).