Port-Jérôme (Seine-Maritime), report
« We have management that is inhumane, that respects no agreements and no employees »says Christelle Lemonnier, IT manager and Force Ouvrière delegate at the Port-Jérôme refinery, in Seine-Maritime.
Tanks, chimneys and flares extend like a forest over more than 300 hectares in these immense places. Around entrance A of the ExxonMobil industrial site, the calcined bitumen testifies to the stubbornness with which refinery workers have stood up to management for more than two months.
Employees have been mobilized for several weeks in Seine-Maritime.
© Émilie Sfez / Reporterre
Last Friday, at the call of several unions, several hundred people gathered in front of the factory located on the banks of the Seine, about thirty kilometers upstream from Le Havre. They contested the Texan group’s decision to close the refinery’s chemical unit, which produces plastics, and demanded better starting conditions.
It was on April 11 that employees learned without any notice of the decision of the multinational which also announced the resale of its Fos-sur-Mer refinery in Bouches-du-Rhône. This is particularly hard news to take, given the 647 jobs that are expected to be eliminated on the Normandy site.
Several hundred people demonstrated near the factory.
© Émilie Sfez / Reporterre
« I entered the Vistalon unit in 2007 and which was closed in 2020, there is also another synthetic rubber unit, the Butyl unit which was closed in 2015 », confides Pierre-Antoine Auger, operator on the polypropylene line and Force Ouvrière delegate. According to him, there is no doubt that this decision by the group is part of a plan to gradually close its activities in France.
However, this company which earned 55 billion in profit in 2022 and nearly 40 billion in 2023 is very far from being in poor financial health. On the contrary, it is one of the most profitable companies on the planet. That same year, its president, Darren Wood, pocketed the sum of $37 million for his management activities.
« What’s happening here is the opposite of transition »
« What’s happening here is the opposite of transition »deplores Céline Brulins, senator PCF who came to support the struggling employees. Met during the gathering, the latter denounces the group’s greed: « We are going to produce with shale gas and oil in the United States and in South-East Asia with oil activities which will pollute just as much or even more »points out the elected official.
At around 2 p.m., the demonstration set off towards the Port-Jérôme town hall. Taking the wide and empty industrial boulevard which runs alongside the refinery for more than 2 km, the crowd made up of employees from the chemistry unit, but also many other supporters seemed very small, lost in this place of surreal proportions.
« What we are asking is to leave this company, but with dignity »
From now on, the question for employees is to know how departures will take place. If management has accepted a certain number of early retirements, the guarantees given to younger employees are, according to the unions, insufficient. « What we are asking is to leave this company, but with dignity »slips Pierre-Antoine Auger.
In this industrial zone, new factories presented as « green » should see the light of day in the coming years, notably with the construction of the largest hydrogen production site by electrolysis in the world.
Even if these new installations will involve the creation of new jobs, Gilles Telal of the CFE–CGC however, mentions the risk of loss of rights for employees finding themselves in these new sectors, often without sector agreements.
Trade unionists say they are worried about the future of employees who will remain in this area of the industry.
© Émilie Sfez / Reporterre
« A refinery operator who is going to take care of the wind turbines off the coast of Fécamp will certainly not be paid in the same way » deplores the trade unionist – also representing French employees of his union on the European committee – who deplores the inhumanity of the Exxon group as much as of the industries « green » which would develop at the expense of workers’ rights.
An apprehension also shared by Christelle Lemonnier: « The people who are going to be made redundant will go to other companies, of course, but they will be paid at a slingshot because these are companies which for the moment are not part of conventions like the oil convention. »
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