The Reims industrial world takes a new blow. After Arcelor Mittal and Reims Aerospace, it is now Valéo, specializing in electronic and lighting systems, which is affected by job cuts. According to information from France Bleu Champagne-Ardenne, 97 positions will be eliminated on the automotive supplier's sitethis represents a third of the site's workforce, which today has 323 employees. The announcement was to be made this Wednesday afternoon, in extraordinary CSE.
The majority of positions, 59 of them, are R&D, Research and Development positions. 33 positions concern production labor. The last five are changes to positions or eliminations of vacant positions.
Production labor positions are subject to a voluntary departure plan. Research and Development and indirect labor positions fall within the framework of a PSE, a Job Protection Plan.
“Reims will become an industrial desert”, denounce Valeo employees
This announcement comes a few days after that of the closure of the ArcelorMittal site in Reims and of the judicial liquidation of the company Reims Aerospace. Several Reims Valeo employees denounce a “great Christmas present.” They also fear that Reims will become a “industrial desert”or even a “dormitory town”.
The CSE, which started at 4:30 p.m. this Wednesday, November 27 at the Valeo site in Reims, rue Colonel Charbonneaux, was scheduled to last two to three hours, according to information from France Bleu Champagne-Ardenne. At the end, employees will decide if they wish to take actions to express their anger.
868 job cuts across France and two sites closed
The Valeo site in Reims is not the only one affected by these job cuts. This Wednesday, the group's management has indicated that it wants to eliminate 868 positions in total, on eight of its French sites, without specifying a date. A spokesperson for the group specifies that there will be 694 forced departures, and 174 voluntary departures.
Beyond the job cuts, the Valeo sites of La-Suze-sur-Sarthe, in Sarthe, and La Verrière, in Yvelines, will be closed. Most of their employees should be offered jobs at other sites nearby.
At the end of October, the general manager of Valeo, Christophe Périllat, indicated that the equipment manufacturer was suffering in particular from slipping electrification, with “a lot of postponements of new production launches among manufacturers”. Valeo then slightly revised downwards, by -3.2%, its turnover target for the year 2024, at 21.3 billion euros.
