Since January 2024, the company has admitted to using illegal treatments to purify its mineral waters. A preliminary investigation for deception has been opened by the Epinal prosecutor’s office.
The Vosges prefecture announced on Tuesday the signing of a “revitalization agreement” with Nestlé, which will have to pay 813,000 euros to “promote the emergence of new activities”, after a plan to eliminate 171 jobs in 2023.
A major provider of jobs in the Vittel-Contrexéville area, where it still had 721 employees before its social plan, the Nestlé Waters company has been subjected to “its obligation to revitalize” the territory, the prefecture indicated in a press release.
This obligation, included in the Labor Code for groups of more than 1,000 employees who carry out a collective redundancy, applies in addition to the support measures taken for the dismissed employees, the prefecture recalls. It should make it possible to create “new jobs to replace those eliminated.”
Plan social
The agreement, signed between the State and the company, provides for the mobilization of 813,000 euros by the company and defines the projects likely to be financed. A first launch committee of this agreement was held on Tuesday.
With the social plan implemented in 2023, Nestlé Waters’ workforce in the Vosges has fallen to 550 employees, a historically low level. According to a former union representative, 2,100 employees were still working at the plant in 2005.
According to Nestlé Waters, this social plan was motivated by the decision taken in 2022 to stop marketing Vittel in Germany, after the non-renewal of its contracts with the distributor Lidl.
Since then, in January 2024, the company has admitted to having used illegal treatments to purify its mineral waters. A preliminary investigation for deception was opened by the Epinal prosecutor’s office, and the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (Anses) has recommended “increased monitoring” of Nestlé sites.
