the essential
Around a hundred employees of Thales Alenia Space gathered in Toulouse this Friday to denounce a plan to cut jobs. “An adaptation plan” according to management. Among the causes of this reorganization, Thales is said to have missed the turn of nanosatellite constellations.
Union flags flying, around a hundred people gathered this Friday in front of the Thales Alenia Space site south of Toulouse. A social movement called by the CGT, a minority union within the group, which denounces a plan to eliminate 1,124 positions in France, including 715 in Toulouse.
“Sacrificed space”
“We want to show our opposition,” emphasizes Thomas Meynadier, union representative at the Toulouse establishment. Thales has recorded record profits in its armament branch but “the satellite branch has a much lower profit level” and “our management, to please shareholders, has decided to sacrifice space,” explains the union representative. However, “everyone agrees that by 2024, the space market will be worth 1,000 billion euros,” notes Thomas Meynadier, who calls on local and national elected officials and promises other actions.
Left-wing elected officials came to support employees
Several elected officials from the left were also present on Friday morning to support the employees: Pierre Lacaze of the Communist Party, Agathe Roby (LFI) or the outgoing Green MP Christine Arrighi for whom France and Thales missed the turn of nanosatellite constellations: “States have abandoned space. The power of the United States arrived on the market, Elon Musk and the small satellites that shook everything up, the government did not know how to anticipate” says the one who chaired the aeronautics and space study group at the National Assembly. The outgoing Insoumis MP François Piquemal argued for a takeover of space by the public authorities: “There has been a startupization of the vision of space.”
No redundancy according to management
“Beware of the psychosocial risks for our colleagues who are victims of this social plan” worried Dominique Ferrachat of the CGT Thales Aviation, when his former colleague Philippe Queulin recalled the suicides, recognized as work accidents, of two TAS employees in 2008 and 2015. Contacted, the management of Thales Alenia Space put forward the figure of 980 positions eliminated at the national level but “these people will remain in the Thales group” with “mobility proposals” or “the creation of entities that will allow reassigned employees to work from Toulouse, but not in the space sector.”
